A Lovely Delirium
by Kyra4
Summary: PostHogwarts. A mission gone wrong strands Draco and Hermione deep underground, with one of them dangerously injured and their escape route prowled by Death Eaters. Will they be rescued? And how will they cope until they are? COMPLETE!
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I do not own these characters! I receive absolutely no compensation for writing about these characters, other than the warm fuzzy feeling I get from nice reviews, and valuable practice, so that hopefully one day I will become a published author of fame to rival JKR's, and then people will rip off _my_ characters! Muah ha ha! Hey, a gal can dream…**

**This fic was written for the Spring Forward Fic Exchange. The fic request I was given to fulfill is as follows:**

**Rating(s) of the fic you want:** R/NC-17  
**One tone/mood you want your gift to include:** angst with a Dramione ending  
**One element/theme/item you want your gift to include:** Post-Hogwarts  
**One common cliché you don't your gift to include:** Draco being in love with Hermione since third year when she slapped him

**Summary: A mission-gone-wrong leaves Draco and Hermione wounded and trapped in a small cavern deep below the earth's surface, with only one exit that is being prowled by Death Eaters on the lookout for them. How will they get out of this? And will the extreme circumstances act as a catalyst, transforming their dislike for one another into a grudging respect and perhaps something more…?**

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"Granger, will you please just _shut up?_" Draco hissed through clenched teeth, shooting Hermione a quick, venomous sideways glare from those unsettlingly pale eyes of his- eyes that Hermione had still never quite learned to trust, let alone _like_.

"Merlin, you're going to get us both killed," he continued, in a seriously irked whisper. "Why in the hell was I saddled with you for this assignment, again?"

Hermione huffed a stray curl out of her line of vision, inwardly seething. She was so angry with her so-called _partner_ at the moment that she had almost completely lost focus on the task at hand. Why _had_ the two of them been paired up, anyway? Their intense dislike of one another was hardly a secret in the Army of the Phoenix- the entity which had resulted from the merge of the Order of the Phoenix and "Dumbledore's Army" several months after Hermione had graduated, with top honors, from Hogwarts.

That she, Harry and Ron were destined to be active in this new organization had been taken entirely for granted- Draco's participation, on the other hand, now _that_ had come as a bit of a shock. It had been Snape, of course- his mentor and role model once his father had been imprisoned back in fifth year- who had talked him into switching his allegiance, and when Draco had made that decision, he had made it whole-heartedly, and had become, just like Snape before him, an extremely valuable asset to the side of Light… because, also like Snape before him, he maintained numerous contacts on the _other_ side, who had no idea that he was no longer trustworthy. A regular little goldmine of information, Draco had become, with his natural Slytherin proclivity for covert operations and espionage.

However, he had taken after Snape in more ways than one. Just as the older man was perfectly capable of repeatedly risking life and limb for the sake of the Order- well, the Army now- while at the same time absolutely _loathing_ the one person who represented the organization's only chance for success- Harry James Potter- so Draco, Snape's protégé in every respect, showed the same disinclination to ever warm to Harry. Or to Ron. Or to Hermione. Indeed, within the Army, the bad blood between Draco- who, though still certainly aloof in his bearing, treated most other members with a trace of cordiality, at least- and the golden trio was the stuff of legend. Others would stop what they were doing around headquarters when Draco encountered any member of the "Gryffindor dream team" in the hallway, in order to watch the wary, unpleasant interaction that was certain to follow; the pause, sudden electricity crackling in the air, nearly tangible- the cold, visual size-up on both parts- the exchange of surnames, spat from lips that were curled back with loathing- and the parting, finally, Draco's lip curled in disdain while the other- be it Harry or Ron or Hermione, shook their head and muttered venomously all the way down the hall.

No, there was no love lost here- not a trace of warmth, or of trust, on either side, even though when Draco had been admitted he had been required, like all new recruits, to state his purpose in joining and to take an oath of loyalty while under the influence of Veritaserum. Hermione had spent two entire weeks, following Draco's swearing-in ceremony, ransacking first the Army's library and then the large public one in Diagon Alley, searching for any evidence whatsoever that it was possible for a person to somehow conquer the effects of that potion. She had turned up nothing to confirm her suspicion, but the mere fact that she put so much effort into trying proved- (along with the fact that she could tend to become unhealthily obsessed with any book-related project, as Ron had pointed out)- just how deep the animosity between them _went_.

And then word had come in that the Death Eaters were developing a code of some sort for use in their written communiqués- a result of the Army's increased efficiency in intercepting enemy owls. The good news was that their sources reported the code was a work in progress- far from finished, and this seemed to be confirmed by the handful of notes the Army had managed to retrieve that were written in it; they were short, consisting of four or five words at the most, and utilized the same characters of this odd new alphabet over and over again.

These had been given to Hermione in the hope that she'd be able to at least partly decipher them- she had, after all, been the best student in runes and dead languages that Hogwarts had seen in well over a century- but she had proved unsuccessful; she simply didn't have enough material to work with. The same handful of symbols repeated over and over again, albeit in slightly different variations, was getting her nowhere. And so it had been that a meeting was called, and a decision was reached, that it was imperative to get Hermione more information on this developing Death Eater code. And by sheer coincidence, the latest intelligence, which was revealed at the same gathering, was that a small group of the Death Eater intellectual elite- no more than half-a-dozen people, tops- were meeting on a weekly basis to further develop the code… and the Army had managed to secure information on the date, time and location of the next meeting.

And so now here she was, trying to split her concentration between the proceedings going on below her, and Malfoy, the utter prat, beside her who was still staring at her murderously, and only because she'd gotten carried away a moment ago, listening through her Extendable Ear to the conversation of the Death Eaters, and had whispered enthusiastically, "that's _it!_" when something one of them said- (the only woman down there, Draco's very own Aunt Bellatrix, Hermione was almost positive)- had triggered in her mind a crucial, code-crunching connection. Well, she'd had a _right_ to be excited, for Merlin's sake! Bellatrix had just given her the key to solving this thing when they got back to headquarters.

Not that Draco had any idea, of course; he was just cheesed off that she had made a _teensy_ little sound of enthusiasm. Ruddy Malfoy. Daring to question her value on this mission when the only reason they were here at all was that-

"I'm the language expert, remember, Malfoy?" she hissed furiously. _I'm _the _only_ one who serves a purpose here, because _I'm _the one who can break this infernal code! So one might argue that in reality I am the one who is saddled with _you_, and the only reason being that you're such a sneaky little-"

"Ferret?" Draco interrupted in a bored drawl. "Really, Granger, for such a self-proclaimed language guru, you have a rather repetitive little vocabulary there. Believe it or not, I've heard that one just a time or t-"

"Actually, I was going to say 'bastard'," Hermione interjected in a mock-sweet whisper, flashing him a big, fake smile in the gloom. "Sneaky little bastard. But now you mention it, I suppose 'ferret' would do in a pinch-"

Draco's eyes were glittering almost dangerously by now. "Sneaky little bastard, then, eh?" he spat back at her, hardly bothering to keep his own voice down any longer. "Well thanks for that, Granger- so now let's see, how on earth could Potter's precious princess benefit from having a 'sneaky little bastard' tagging along on _her_ mission? Let's just try to get to the bottom of this one, shall we?"

Through the Extendable Ear, Hermione heard all conversation below stop abruptly. Tearing her attention from Draco, she peered down into the depths of the catacomb where Voldemort's intellectuals were grouped around a single fire, the light and warmth of which appeared to have been magically magnified- but not by much. Discretion was a consideration for the Death Eaters, after all. As it _should_ have been for Draco and Hermione. Yet at the moment it was needed most, it seemed to be the very _last_ thing on Draco's mind. His voice was rising steadily as- here was the kicker- he continued to rant on about his role in this assignment… to ensure that it was carried out with all due stealth! It would have been comical, had not their _lives_ been on the line.

Some time he had picked to come unglued- Hermione had never worked one-on-one with him before, but she'd heard he was ordinarily a master at what he did; after all, he'd been taught espionage by the best- Severus Snape. Who was currently far a-field on an unrelated assignment, which was why Draco had been sent with her tonight. Personally, she would have preferred waiting for Snape to return so that _he_ could have accompanied her- and that was saying something, for though she was twenty years old now, well into adulthood by wizarding standards, she had never warmed to her former potions professor either. He would have been better than Malfoy, though. Who ever would have guessed that the sneaky little bastard could be so _touchy?_

It was almost enough to make her regret what she'd said. Almost.

Merlin, the people below were looking around themselves, now, rising to their feet, reaching for their wands, unsettled.

"Malfoy-"

More than one of the Death Eaters was turning to the sole woman, as if for guidance.

"Let's see," Draco continued, "could it possibly be that having a 'sneaky little bastard' along might be just what's needed-"

"_Malfoy_-"

"-to get you in and out of here in _one bloody piece,_ you daft little _bitch!_"

WHACK.

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It was not something she had intended to do. Hermione was not an impulsive person by nature, nor a stupid one- but by the time her mind had finished forming the thought _it would be really, really foolish to slap Malfoy right now_, the deed was done- just as in third year at Hogwarts, he was staring at her in shocked outrage, his eyes huge, with an angry red splotch, distinctly noticeable even in light so dim as to be nearly nonexistent, spreading on his cheek.

And the _sound_ of it-

To Hermione it sounded like a gunshot, so loud and sudden was it- Draco, who of course had no concept of guns, equated it to the sound of a bludger breaking a nose. (Preferably Potter's.) It reverberated through the vast underground space (the location the Death Eaters had chosen for their clandestine meeting put Hermione, fittingly enough, in mind of a movie set for an "Indiana Jones" picture)- echoing, seeming to Draco and Hermione to actually gather strength as it went, unmistakable for anything other than what it was; a human sound. There were shouts now from below.

Hermione strained to see what was going on- the Death Eaters had formed themselves into a tight defensive circle, their backs facing in toward each other, their wands drawn on the darkness that surrounded them. If there was one thing to be grateful for, it was that the acoustics of the cavern had caused so many echoes and distortions to the sound that it was impossible for the people below to pinpoint exactly where it had come from.

This, however, proved to be only a temporary setback for the Death Eaters. Bellatrix, who apparently was indeed the leader of this select little group, and with good reason too, was muttering a complex set of instructions to her wand. Hermione, fascinated, leaned forward a bit, hoping to get a clearer idea of what the other woman was up to- when Bellatrix finished her incantation, thrust the wand straight up in the air, and shouted "_Point!_"

Instantly the wand aimed itself directly at Hermione and Draco's hiding place; a small, high outcropping of rock sheltered by a low, crumbling stone wall that ran around its edge and was reached by a passage through the solid rock of the cavern wall, so small that in order to escape they would need to navigate it on their hands and knees until it joined a larger stone corridor a few yards away, this one leading either up to the surface or further down into the earth, to where the Death Eaters were at the moment. The ledge appeared to have been some sort of burial shelf at one time; it had been occupied by a skeleton when the two Army agents had arrived, hours before the Death Eaters had been expected, to set up their surveillance. Draco had "_Scourgified_" it away indifferently, causing Hermione to take him to task, with great indignation, for treating human remains like so much common rubbish. Draco had shrugged and said that he was sorry, if he'd known his actions would cause her such distress he would simply have kicked it over the edge and been done with it _that_ way.

She had seen red, of course, but there had been at least one thing the two of them had agreed upon; the ledge had been the perfect spot for them to keep track of what was going on below. Now, however, due to its tiny escape passage, it had just become the perfect _trap_ if they were to be seen.

And they were seen.

Hermione's eyes widened in horror as the wand, now honed unerringly in on her, hit her with a thin yet intense beam of light as bright as any Muggle searchlight. It would have hit her with something a lot worse a second later, had Draco, who had ducked behind the low wall for shelter, not yanked her roughly down beside him. A streak of poison-green light cut the air where her head had been and slammed into the rock wall above them with enough force to shower rubble down on them.

Ignoring her squeak of surprise, Draco had hunkered down and immediately begun rummaging through his various pockets, searching urgently for something, muttering darkly under his breath all the while. From below them came the sound of Bellatrix shouting orders. More jets of colored light shot overhead, missing them by inches. Draco found what it seemed he'd been looking for- an item too small for Hermione to identify in the dim light, but she gathered by the sound of relief he made, and the way in which he placed it carefully aside, that it was what he'd been after. The next second, though, he was back to digging through his things- apparently there was more that he needed.

The situation was getting exponentially more urgent with each passing second. The thing that made their circumstances so dire was that once the Death Eaters had all arrived some time ago, they had done something neither Draco nor Hermione had thought to expect; set up anti-apparition wards all over the place. There would be no escaping by magical means; they needed to figure another way out. Something, Hermione thought with mounting panic, needed to be done _now_.

"Malfoy-"

"Shut it, Granger," Draco snarled, not bothering to stop in his search or even glance in her direction.

"I _beg_ your-" Hermione began, but once again Draco cut her off.

"Granger, unless you're about to start apologizing _profusely_ for the enormous fuck-up you've just caused, I do _not _want to hear another goddamn word out of your mouth. Not one. Is that perfectly clear?"

He raised his eyes to hers for a moment, finally, and she could still see the blotch on his face- only now it had taken on a recognizable shape; her handprint, in reverse, glaring back at her in lurid red against his otherwise too-pale skin. She opened her mouth, intending an angry retort, but words eluded her, confronted as she was by the silent, accusatory presence of that slap mark. She closed it again.

"Good," Draco said emphatically, and she had no idea whether he was referring to her decision to remain silent, or to the success, at long last, of his search, for just then he pulled out and held aloft the fruit of all his labor- a small glass vial that Hermione recognized instantly, and which sent a shiver of cold fear ripping straight through the core of her. Seeing this vial now was _not a good thing_, as it contained something that Draco had sworn vehemently he would _never_ use, not unless either capture or death- or, more likely, the one followed closely by the other- were absolutely imminent. In which case he was under direct orders to drink the contents of this small bottle, which would serve a dual purpose once ingested.

First, it would act as an unusually long-lived version of regular Polyjuice Potion, changing Draco's appearance not for the standard one hour, but rather for twelve. Into someone whom, unlike Draco himself, the Death Eaters would be completely unsurprised at discovering on an Army mission with Hermione Granger- and, incidentally, the person Draco hated probably second most in all the world- Ron Weasley (who was no more thrilled at the prospect of Draco taking on his appearance- no matter _how_ dire the circumstances- than Draco himself). Next, it would render him completely and utterly mute for those same twelve hours- unable even to whisper- and therefore, obviously, a great deal more difficult to interrogate. The reasoning behind this was that it would severely damage Snape's credibility with Voldemort, and put him in no small danger, if the Death Eaters were somehow to capture, or even to kill Draco, thereby discovering his betrayal of their cause. Losing Draco would be a heavy blow to the Army- but losing him _and_ having Snape exposed would be a catastrophe; something that the side of Light might simply not recover from.

Knowing all this, Hermione watched in horror as Draco unstoppered the bottle with his teeth. Had she really bollixed things up _that_ badly? Was she going to die tonight, or worse yet, somehow survive only to have to explain to Severus Snape that her inability to control her impulses under stress had led to Draco's demise? That would be a fate worse than death indeed.

Draco's silver eyes cut sideways to her. "For Merlin's sake, keep your head low, Granger," he hissed. "_Lower_, damnit!" and dragged her down further until she was scrunched beside him, lying more than sitting, wedged between the outcropping's low stone wall and the cold, damp side of the cavern. "Now listen carefully. As I drink this vile looking shit right here, I'm going to need you to take this-" he shoved the other item he'd pulled out and laid aside, the one that had been too small for her to make out earlier, into her hand- "and restore it to its full size. This is our ticket out of here, understand?"

Hermione glanced down now, bringing her hand close to her face, squinting in the gloom. A very tiny broomstick, no larger than a matchstick, lay cupped in her palm. She raised her eyes to Draco's and found him watching her closely, assessing her reaction. It was no secret in the Army that Hermione had little love for broomstick flight. Was completely terrified of it, in point of fact.

"Isn't there-" she swallowed hard, and her eyes went to the small opening in the rock just centimeters away from where they crouched. "There isn't any other way? What about-"

Draco followed her gaze, and gave a short bark of bitter, mirthless laughter. "What about _what_, Granger? Crawling out of here on our hands and knees, single-file, with our backs to our attackers? Right. Well see, the thing about that is, I've never had much of a desire to find out what it's like taking an Unforgivable straight up my arse. How about you?" When her only answer was a glare, he nodded curtly. "So the broomstick it is, then. Just hold on tight. You'll be fine if you don't think too much. Speaking of which-" he had begun to raise the vial to his lips, but paused a moment, regarding her. "You cracked it, didn't you? The code? You've got it figured out?"

It wasn't a question, not really. And there was a queer sort of resignation in his voice that she found puzzling. "Yes, I've got it figured," she confirmed, "the simplicity is brilliant. Really, all they've done is-"

Draco silenced her with a raised hand. "We're out of time," he said, as another curse zinged overhead.

Hermione felt a quick resurgence of annoyance. She was _proud _of her accomplishment, damn it, in spite of everything that had followed, and- "if you didn't want to know about it, Malfoy, then why in Merlin's name did you _ask?_"

Draco's response explained the sudden, odd air of resignation about him. "Because, Granger," he said, sounding almost tired now, "that means I have to defend you with my bloody life." Those eyes like mercury caught hers one final time. She had no way of knowing then, the next time she would see them their natural color, how inconceivably different the circumstances would be.

Then he raised the vial to his lips once more, tipped it briefly toward her, a mocking little salute- _cheers_, the gesture seemed to say- and downed its contents in a single swallow, his face contorting with disgust as he did so. The last thing Hermione heard him say before his voice was silenced by the potion was, "ugh, poverty tastes revolting!"


	2. Chapter 2

This slight on her friend infuriated Hermione to no end, of course, but she had little time to dwell on it; things were now happening far too fast. Even Draco's transformation was accelerated; another feature of this newly upgraded Polyjuice (yet a fourth feature was that Draco's clothes would transform along with him, adapting to Ron's superior height). A powerful shudder surged through his body, but for all its intensity it lasted only a couple of seconds, and then the thing was done- to all outward appearances it was Ron there beside her, eyes scrunched shut, body tight and trembling in the aftermath of the violent change it had just endured, booted feet braced hard against the cavern's rock wall.

"M- R- Malfoy-" Hermione stuttered, completely flustered. She knew all about Polyjuice Potion, of course; had studied its every aspect and application in textbooks, classes, and even Army training seminars. She'd brewed it herself, successfully, when still just a child. But she'd never seen it take effect before- her only personal experience with it had been that single botched attempt in second year, which had caused her to lock herself in Myrtle's toilet stall in horror. She hadn't witnessed Harry and Ron's transformations, and so she had nothing to compare this to. The _reality_ of the transformation was stunning; it didn't look as if Draco had morphed into Ron, it looked as though he'd been _replaced_ by Ron. This was her best friend, down to the last orange freckle; the stubborn little cowlick that would never lie flat.

Then Draco's eyes- only they were Ron's eyes now, that unmistakable oceanic blue- snapped open and fixed on her. His gaze was intense, pointed. He was obviously trying to convey something to her. A heartbeat later- and she had almost managed to collect herself by then, honestly she had- his hand flashed out and seized her wrist, yanking her own hand upward, into her line of sight and reminding her forcibly of the miniscule broomstick she held. Her lips parted in a dismayed little "o".

Draco didn't give her time to stall further. As a new volley of curses slammed into the wall alarmingly close to their heads, loosing a small avalanche of rubble down onto them, he grabbed both of her shoulders and gave her a single, hard shake, his eyes burning into hers, the message as clear as if he'd been shouting it;

_Get a bloody move-on, already!_

Grabbing for her wand, she hastily spoke the words that restored the broomstick to its original size and Draco was astride it in a single, fluid movement, pulling her on behind him.

And they were off, just like that, Draco launching them by literally hurling them over the edge of the outcropping into sheer, empty space and plunging them, initially, several yards straight down before recovering, spiraling gradually out of the dive.

Under these circumstances Hermione found herself absurdly grateful for the fact that Draco now resembled Ron down to the last minute detail; it made it far easier to wrap her arms around him so tightly that she must have been restricting his ability to breathe properly, and to slam her face into his back, burrowing in terror between his shoulder-blades.

On the other hand, it was only by reminding herself sternly that this was _not_, in fact, her beloved friend but Draco Malfoy, prat extraordinaire, that she was able to restrain herself from shrieking aloud in terror as the broomstick dodged, weaved, dove and rolled out of the way of the numerous spells that were now being hurled at it, making its way doggedly toward the cavern's main entrance; the only escape route large enough to fly out of. Had she opened her eyes, Hermione would have seen what Draco did; that the Death Eaters had scattered widely throughout the cavern and were now sending curses at the two broom-bound agents from six directions at once.

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Face set in grim lines of determination (just because he'd taken the precaution of downing that goddamned nasty potion didn't mean he'd actually reconciled himself to death today, not if there was anything to be done for it- his first priority now was to save Granger's arse for the valuable information she possessed, but he fully intended to bring his own arse along for the ride, thank you very much), Draco, for his part, very nearly managed to pull it off- a miracle escape, unscathed.

Nearly. But not quite.

He was almost to the exit when it happened, the Death Eaters scattered about on the ground amazed, outraged at his skill in flight; some of them literally hopping mad. And he probably _would_ have managed to get them both out untouched if he'd been flying in "his own skin"- that is to say, if he'd still been in possession of _Draco's body_, not Ron's. It was just the slight discomfort he felt in the taller boy's body, the slight awkwardness of the too-long limbs, less aero dynamical than Draco's own- Ron's longer reach was well suited to his customary Quidditch position of Keeper, but his gangly build was less than ideal for the kind of intricate flying that was required in a good Seeker like Draco, or for that matter, was required _right now_.

And so the moment came where he dodged just a fraction of a second too slow and a particularly well-aimed curse- almost certainly from Bellatrix- slammed into Hermione from behind, nearly knocking her from the broom. Thank Merlin it wasn't the killing curse, which was equally lethal if it hit you in the pinky as if it hit you in the heart. It seemed, however, that Bellatrix had decided to get creative, start using a few personal favorites of her own. This particular one happened to be a knife-edge curse, which would have been just as deadly as the Avada Kedavra had it hit Hermione full-on, but fortunately all it had done was graze her shoulder, slashing it painfully, but not threatening her life. She reacted by tightening her arms convulsively about Draco's midsection and stifling a cry into his shirt.

That was when things really went wrong for Draco.

He felt the impact jolt through Hermione's body and knew she was hit, but because she was behind him he had no way of gauging how bad the injury was. In a momentary burst of panic- his first and only one so far- all he knew was that he _needed to protect_ the hurt and frightened young woman who was clinging to him for dear life. The oath he had taken demanded he protect the information she now guarded, and more than that, _instinct_ demanded that he protect _her_. No matter that he had never been able to stand the bossy little know-it-all; no matter that she had single-handedly gotten them both into this mess. He was male, she was female, he was sound, she was hurt, he needed to defend her, end of story. And though Draco was usually no more inclined to act impulsively than Hermione was- (though he had often behaved rashly and with false bravado in his school days, he had grown into a far more careful and methodical adult, otherwise he would never have had such success as a spy, even _with _all of Snape's tutelage)- the present circumstances did not allow time for a lot of deliberation.

So he acted instantly, instinctively, yanking the broom around one hundred and eighty degrees, placing himself squarely between Bellatrix and Hermione, shielding her.

Just in time to take one hell of a curse, dead on.

He barely kept hold of the broomstick, but managed through sheer grit and determination not to let go. It had been another of Bellatrix's curses, of course- (mad as the woman was, she seemed the only one out of all of them who was a halfway decent shot)- another bloodletting curse. The jet of light that had escaped her wand had actually transfigured itself into a solid, three-dimensional weapon something akin to a crossbow bolt- which was now protruding from the center of his chest, quivering from the impact, a warm wet stain, a shade darker than the black of his clothing, blossoming out around it.

Looking down at it, he mouthed _Oh, shit_- in complete silence, of course.

For a moment nothing happened. He and Hermione seemed suspended in space, in time. The Death Eaters below were all staring up with uniform expressions of shock on their faces, wands useless, forgotten- and Bellatrix, his own aunt, the crazy bitch, was lowering hers slowly, a triumphant smirk spreading across her face, apparently confident that her work was done, that it was only a matter of seconds before he toppled from the broomstick and Hermione, unable to manage it on her own, quickly followed suit.

He nearly did, too- actually began slipping sideways, his grip on the waxed wood handle loosening more from shock than anything else- the reality of the pain had yet to fully sink in. But he steadied himself, focusing on his aunt's sneering face below him. He had never liked the woman, not even when he had still been the dutiful son and Death Eater initiate. She had always reeked of a dangerous, feral insanity that had set his teeth on edge. _Damned_ if he was going to give her the satisfaction of watching him fall off his broom.

Fuck. Her.

He blinked hard against the darkness that was beginning to bloom like flowers in front of his eyes. _Not now._ Clenching his jaw, he jerked the broom abruptly around again and was off like a rocket, back toward the entrance of the cavern, managing to catch just a glimpse of his aunt on the ground, raising her wand again but too late- her face contorted in furious disbelief.

Then they were into the corridor, the one that led either up to the surface or down even further, into the bowels of the earth. And Draco, now flying no more than half-conscious, made yet another mistake. All of his energy now channeled into simply avoiding the walls and floor, he took the turn which led down, rather than up.

Behind them, the shouts of the Death Eaters faded, as did the light from the bonfire that had illuminated the cavern. They were in nearly complete darkness when he felt Hermione shift behind him, removing one of her arms from around his waist- then she murmured "_Lumos_." Immediately they were surrounded by a soft, golden glow as Hermione clutched her wand in one hand, his shirt in the other.

"Malfoy," she said in a strained voice, "I really think we're going the wrong way, and- wait, why is your shirt so wet? What is-? Oh Merlin, is that blood? _Malfoy?_"

He finally lost it then, uncertain whether it was actually hearing the word _blood_ that did it to him, or whether that was simply the moment that his body lost its ability to carry on, but for one reason or another the sort of cold shock he'd gone into was abruptly replaced by a great, rolling wave of white-hot, molten pain in his chest and he couldn't do it any more; couldn't navigate, couldn't see, couldn't _breathe_. With his last ounce of control, he pulled sharply back on the broom, bringing them to what Hermione, raised in the Muggle world, would called 'a screeching halt'. It was a violent enough end to their flight to toss them both off the broomstick altogether- fortunately, it had been flying dangerously low right there at the end, so they didn't have far to fall.

Hermione landed on her hands and knees and skidded, scraping herself badly on the rough-hewn stone floor. Draco, for his part, retained enough consciousness and will to twist himself in the air- a nearly feline feat- in order to come down on his side rather than risk landing face-first, which would have driven the arrow-like thing in his chest still deeper. Slamming down on his shoulder, he also skidded several inches, and had the additional misfortune to have landed near the wall, which he hit head-first, hard enough to cause an explosion of multi-colored sparks across his vision.

And then it was over, the broomstick clattering to the ground, everything silent, everything dark- Hermione's wand had guttered out on impact. Draco managed, using reserves of strength he hadn't known he possessed, to pull himself slowly into a half-sitting position, back pressed to the corridor wall, his own breathing shallow and ragged in his ears, his ability for conscious thought fading fast.

_So this is how it ends,_ he thought thickly, hazily; _underground, in the dark, murdered by my own aunt, in a foreign body- bloody Weasley's body!- and all for the sake of Hermione Goddamn Gr-_

"Malfoy? _Malfoy!_"

There was some scrabbling in the dark, then Hermione's voice, first summoning her wand with a muttered _Accio_, then reigniting it with yet another _Lumos_. This time the light, though in reality no stronger than a moment ago, seemed blinding to him; sent shards of agony slicing through his aching head. He scrunched his eyes shut and raised a hand protectively to press against the back of his head, where it had hit the rock wall with such force- and that was how Hermione found him, Draco-who-looked-like-Ron, half seated, half sprawled; half conscious, half dead, an evil-looking foreign object still embedded in his chest.

00000

"Oh my God," she whispered, horrified, completely mindless of the warm blood that soaked her own shoulder, "oh Malfoy, no. You can't. You can't _die_, do you hear me? Malfoy, _no!_" She seized him by the shoulders and shook him gently, but insistently, determined to keep him conscious- he had whipped the broom around back there in the cavern and taken this wound in _her_ stead, she understood that perfectly, and she was not about to live the rest of her life with the knowledge that Draco Malfoy, whom she had never spoken a kind word to in her life, whose motives and loyalty she had continued to question and whom she had treated with undisguised mistrust and contempt even after he had pledged his oath to the Army, had willingly sacrificed his life to save hers. No. No way. She was going to save him back so they would be fair and square. And then maybe- well, maybe she even owed him an apology. But that was for later. For now, she needed to get his attention, and fast. Allowing him to slip away was absolutely out of the question.

"_Malfoy._ Look at me. Come on, _look_ at me." She grabbed him by the chin. Blue eyes opened slowly, clouded with pain and shock; sought her face, but were unable to focus. It felt so strange to be saying Malfoy's name, yet looking at Ron. If possible, it made things worse that she should be seeing her best friend's body in this state. The thought of the real Ron suffering like this made her feel slightly nauseas. She remembered briefly back to third year, when she _had_ seen Ron endure immense physical suffering, with his broken leg in the Shrieking Shack. He had borne the pain bravely, more concerned about Harry's well-being than his own. Just as Malfoy had been more concerned about her than himself a short while ago, when he'd taken this curse for her.

She shook her _own_ head to clear it. Ron- Malfoy- they were becoming confused, jumbled together in her mind and she couldn't allow that. She needed to keep a clear train of thought; to be able to think both their way out of this. Malfoy had done his part in getting them away from the Death Eaters. He was capable of doing no more at the moment. The rest was up to her.

As if deliberately calling her attention to the urgency of the situation at hand, Draco's eyes slipped shut once more and he suddenly slumped, all the resistance leaving his body at once, having finally given up on the fight to stay conscious. His hand fell away from his head, startling her; she looked down at it where it came to lie beside him and felt her horror increase- something she would not have thought possible a second ago.

It was covered in blood.

He was bleeding… from his _head? _How in the hell had _that_ happened? Wait- he had a head wound and had just passed out. Oh, no. Oh, _hell_ no…

"Malfoy!" she shouted, shaking him again. "Malfoy!" She grabbed her wand, which she had placed down beside her in order to shake him both-handed, and pressed the tip of it over his heart. "_Ennervate!_"

The spell jolted through him, causing him to shudder and gasp and open his eyes again. Hermione felt dizzy with relief, even when those eyes narrowed angrily at her. Well, of course he'd rather have been unconscious- who could blame him? However, that was not to be allowed, not with a head injury on top of everything else.

"You have to stay awake," she told him urgently. "I don't know when you hit your head, Malfoy, but you don't have to be a mediwizard to know that falling asleep with a possible concussion is _not a good idea._ Now you're not gonna like this, but we need to get this thing out of your chest- there's a very good possibility that it carries some sort of poison or curse. Are we agreed on that much?"

Stall glaring daggers at her with Ron's blue eyes, he tried to say something- but of course, no sound would come. He snapped his mouth shut in frustration and exhaled explosively through his nose, then nodded his head once, grimly.

Hermione swallowed. It was one thing to talk about it- another thing to do it. "I'm going to do a simple pain-alleviation spell," she told him. "It won't kill the pain entirely, but it should help."

As she performed the spell, Draco's breathing quickened in anticipation of what was about to happen to him. He pressed himself back against the damp stone as Hermione, finishing her incantation, gripped the arrow-like weapon's shaft firmly with both hands, and glanced up into his eyes. "All right," she said, "on three. One- two-" and she yanked it free.

Draco's whole body arched violently away from the wall as the unwelcome object that had invaded it was finally wrenched free. Hermione, who had been kneeling, fell back onto her rear, clutching at the weapon which promptly disintegrated into nothing- just so much poison-green dust sifting down through her fingers.

"Malfoy," she said, scrambling back to her knees and snatching up her glowing wand, holding it close to the wound to see the damage. Draco's shirt was drenched with blood. She glanced up at his face- it was ashen; his eyes were open, but vacant now with renewed shock at the further trauma she had just subjected him to. "Malfoy?" there was no response. The lights were on, so to speak, but no one was home. She returned her attention to his chest. She needed to see the wound clearly; that meant peeling back his blood-soaked shirt. She found the ragged hole that the weapon had left in the material, inserted her fingers, and ripped.

Draco sucked in a harsh breath through clenched teeth as her fingertips grazed the puncture wound- Hermione did the same as she saw that it was larger and more jagged than she had expected, and was bleeding quite freely. Muttering hastily, she flicked her wand and bandages exploded from its tip, automatically wrapping themselves tightly around and around Draco's midsection. She then did the same for his head, the bandages cutting across his forehead at an angle, throwing the coppery red Weasley hair that would belong to Draco for the next several hours into complete disarray. This done, she collapsed against the wall opposite him, their feet actually touching in the middle of the corridor. They sat that way in silence for several moments as a bright crimson stain bloomed slowly through the white of Draco's bandages.

"All right," Hermione said at length, "I have to figure out a way to get us out of here. _You_ have to stay awake. Do you hear me, Malfoy? For the love of Merlin, just stay awake- that's your only job now. Okay?"

He nodded, but dully, exhaustedly; not appearing to actually be listening to or understanding her at all. Hermione had the feeling she could have asked him virtually anything- for instance, whether Snape cleaned house with a Muggle vacuum cleaner, wearing a French maid outfit and red stiletto heels- and his response would have been just the same.

But there were other things occupying her mind- such as, how on earth to get out? Apparition was out of the question; ditto portkey. The reason being that although they were now most likely outside of the Death Eaters' wards- if indeed the wards were even still in place; it was entirely possible that the Death Eaters had fled and the wards had fallen- but anyway, though there were no wards to worry about down here, their sheer depth made apparating or portkey-ing out unacceptably risky. Apparating from as deep below the earth as they now were carried at least a fifty-percent chance of splinching- and it would be a greater risk still for Draco, who was hurt, weak, and semi-conscious at best. As for transfiguring one of their belongings into a portkey to get them out- well, that was a frighteningly unreliable prospect as well. There were stories of people activating portkeys from far belowground- far aboveground, too, for that matter- and disappearing never to reappear again. It had something to do with the magnetic pull of the earth's core, Hermione thought she remembered reading once.

She didn't think she could navigate Draco's broomstick- (the latest racing model, and notoriously high-strung, she had read in a review in one of Harry's Quidditch mags on a day when no other reading material had been available)- even with only herself on it, let alone with Draco as a passenger. She could barely handle a Cleansweep. And Draco- well, he couldn't fly them out, obviously. Nor did she think he could walk all the way back to the surface, even if she was supporting him. So just what exactly were they supposed to do? She shook her head in frustration, keeping one eye trained on him across the corridor, lit only by her wand, making sure he remained at least marginally awake.

Merlin, but they were in a bind. It had just occurred to her that perhaps she could float him up to the surface using _Wingardium Leviosa_ or perhaps _Mobilicorpus_ when she heard a sound that made her blood run cold.

Shouts from further up the corridor.

It is a truth well worth remembering that no matter how bad a given situation might seem, things can _always_ get worse. And they just had. Hermione hadn't counted on a pursuit; she had hoped that the Death Eaters would have assumed that she and Draco had taken the correct turn in the passage and made a clean escape. She hadn't taken into consideration Bellatrix's sheer tenacity, her resolve to leave no stone unturned in the search for the two agents who had overheard the secret of her code. She didn't know how much they had heard, or how likely it was that they could crack it, but if her lord discovered that the enemy had been allowed to listen in on one of these supposedly super-secret meetings- and then, even worse, allowed to _escape_ with potentially very damaging information, he would be _most_ displeased. Much as she enjoyed helping to mete out the Dark Lord's wrath, Bella had little desire to be on the receiving end of it. So she had launched a pursuit, splitting her followers into two groups- one heading toward the surface, the other deeper underground, correctly guessing that there was an excellent possibility that the wretched "Weasley boy"- she had recognized that hair, of course; there were few who didn't- would have crashed the broomstick, injured as he was.

"Oh my God," Hermione breathed, frozen for a moment in panic-stricken fear, "oh Merlin and Morgana, help us, what are we gonna _do?_"

But it wasn't like her to sit there and fret uselessly as their enemies drew closer. She had been in tight situations before, time and again with Harry and Ron, and she was still around to tell the tale, wasn't she? She just needed to-

"Pull yourself together, girl," she muttered aloud, and then flung herself across the corridor, to Draco. "Malfoy," she whispered, grasping him by the shoulders, "_Malfoy!_" In an effort to get a response- (though his eyes were open, the state he was in could very nearly be described as catatonic)- she then resorted to something she had never done in her life until that moment; she addressed him by his given name.

"_Draco!_"

Her gambit paid off; he blinked at this, focused on her face. Again tried to speak; again failed to make a sound.

"Draco, we have to move," she said, with quiet urgency. "Come on. You've got to get up. _Right now_." The voices down the corridor were getting louder; nearer.

"Oh, Draco, please!"


	3. Chapter 3

Draco's head was swimming.

In addition to the pain there, which was breaking and receding like waves on the sea-shore, he was badly disoriented- he knew he was in a dark place that he _did not want to be in_- of that much he was certain- but the details as to how he had gotten there, and who his companion was, had become hazy and confused in his mind. He frowned, trying to work it out. It seemed there had been a broomstick flight and… a confrontation of some sort. Someone had been firing curses at them, someone he knew… his aunt? Why would his own aunt want to kill him? Never liked that woman much, never trusted her… and there'd been a girl with him… behind him on the broom, holding him so tightly he'd barely been able to breathe… sorta pretty in a bushy-haired, untamed way… but he'd been angry with her, very angry- he remembered that much clearly. He remembered a vague sense that he had never liked this girl very much, but he couldn't remember exactly why. Maybe he should try to make nice. She _was_ sorta pretty after all. Not classically beautiful, like the parade of girls he had dated, casually, after Hogwarts, or like his slim blonde mother… it had been a long time since he'd seen his mother. Why was that?

He missed his mother.

_Draco! DRACO!_

The voice echoed through his head- someone was calling his name urgently, repeatedly. Was it his mother? Most people called him Malfoy these days. There was not, currently, a woman in his life who called him Draco; there had not been- not regularly, anyway- since shortly after he'd graduated Hogwarts and dropped Pansy Parkinson like yesterday's news. He'd caught her being unfaithful with Zacharius Smith, of all people- a bloody Hufflepuff, for Merlin's sake. There could be no forgiving that. He'd been just about to propose, too- ring picked out, and everything. Had Pansy ever been distraught at learning that her life of luxury as a Malfoy bride had just been yanked out from under her. Screamed and wailed until one would have thought _he'd _been the one who'd cheated- railed at him that he was _breaking her heart_…

Speaking of which- he frowned again, more deeply this time- hadn't there been something, some sort of- of _arrow_ or something- sticking out from the middle of his chest? He was almost sure when he really focused his concentration on trying to remember it… Merlin, that had hurt. Slowly, he dragged a hand up and pressed it to his chest, seeking the foreign object that he remembered embedded there. He found nothing, and allowed himself a small sigh of relief. His fingers came away slightly wet and sticky, though… strange, that.

_DRACO!_

There it was again. His name. Whoever was calling it sounded practically on the verge of tears- as if, were she to call it again, it would come out as a sob. He'd better see what the matter was. With an immense effort, he brought his eyes into focus, blinked hard, and found himself face-to-face with-

_The girl_. The one he'd been so angry at, the one who'd been on the broomstick with him. Harriet. No. Helen? No. Her- Herm- _Hermione_. That was it, Hermione. He tried to speak the name, but was unable to produce a sound. Oh, yeah. There was a reason for that, but damned if he could remember what it was.

She was speaking quietly, throwing frequent glances over her shoulder as she did so, but he could make out the words if he really tried.

"-have to get up," she was saying, "Draco, you _have_ to get up, _now!_"

Get up? Wasn't he up? He pondered this for a moment. No, he supposed, he wasn't up after all. He seemed to be sitting down. Well, sitting down agreed with him just at present, thank you very much. Sitting down was just fine. Except-

"Draco, _please,_" the girl- no, Hermione- whispered, her voice cracking on the 'please', and so he decided to humor her, because she was _so_ pretty, in a dirt-smudged, tired sort of way, and she looked so scared. Using the wall as a support, he dragged himself to his feet.

Immediately, it seemed as if the floor, like a rogue broomstick, was utterly determined to pitch him off. The corridor tilted at a crazy angle, the floor seeming to lurch right out from under him. In the next instant, he'd collapsed against Hermione; she was all that was holding him upright. "Put your arm around me," she said straight into his ear, "and then we have to go, Draco, we have to _move_."

Draco. He liked it when she called him that. Though it took every last ounce of his concentration and strength, he managed to put one foot in front of the other, and to keep doing it. They stumbled down the corridor, and now even Draco could make out the voices behind them, getting louder, getting closer. He got a very strong sense from Hermione that the voices were bad. Seeing the faces that those voices were attached to would be worse still. They were trying to escape the voices; now he understood.

Amazingly, it was Draco rather than Hermione who spotted the tiny alcove off the passageway- she would have passed it right by in her haste. Stopping abruptly, he jerked her to a halt and pointed at the opening in the wall, dimly illuminated by her wand, little more than a crack in the rock reaching no higher than his knee. They could get through it, though, if they went one at a time on their stomachs. (This was, of course, exactly the scenario he had sought to avoid back on the rock ledge in the cavern- only now there really were no other alternatives. The passage they were in appeared to run more or less straight, at a gradual downward angle, indefinitely; if they passed up this hiding place, another might not present itself. If they wanted to avoid their pursuers, this was their best and only chance.)

He shoved her ahead of him, watched her hit the ground on all fours and then wriggle her way into the hole in the wall. He noticed something as she did so- that her right shoulder was drenched in blood, the fabric of her shirt ripped there, the material around it soaked to halfway down her arm, and across her shoulder blade to the middle of her back. Unlike him, though, she didn't even have the benefit of bandages on her wound.

Her wound.

His girl- his _Hermione_- whose voice, when she spoke his name made even this cold, dark place feel bright (and he knew there were reasons, and pressing reasons at that, why he shouldn't be thinking this way about this particular girl, but he just couldn't put his finger on them at the moment)- had been wounded. By _them_; the people who were chasing them now.

A wave of bright, hot rage crashed over him- he felt angrier in that instant than he'd thought himself capable of getting. He literally saw red for a heartbeat or two and was actually in the process of turning to face the oncoming voices- he had a sudden urge to take them all on together, no matter how many there were, and make them pay and pay and pay some more- when he heard her voice again, calling him.

"Draco? _Draco_, why aren't you coming? Oh God, oh Merlin, _please!_"

And then he was crawling after her, because he just couldn't seem to deny that voice.

Following the light of Hermione's wand, he pushed through into a tiny space that would seem to make the perfect hideout- or, should they be discovered here, the perfect deathtrap. Hermione was taking steps to prevent that, however; as Draco glanced around, foggily taking in the details of his surroundings- an area about the size of a small bedroom, ceiling just high enough to allow Hermione to stand upright, but not him- she was erecting wards on their newfound sanctuary, head bowed over her wand in concentration, flying through the incantations. She quickly soundproofed the room, rendered the crack they had just crawled through invisible to people out in the corridor, and gave it a slightly repellent quality as well; a ward that would cause a faint, subconscious sense of unease in anyone outside who intended them harm, encouraging unwelcome passersby to hurry on their way.

She finished not a moment too soon, then threw herself down on her stomach and peered back through the crack in the rock wall. "I can see a light coming," she told Draco, whispering even now that the soundproofing spell was in place. "I can see- oh, here they come! There are three pairs of feet, and- and one of them's holding your broomstick, Draco! So they'll know we've come this way… but that's alright, they won't find us now. They'll just keep going down; they can go straight down to hell, for all I care!"

Draco cracked a tired smile despite himself, from where he had settled against a wall on the far side of the room. This Hermione, he had a strong feeling she was normally quite a rigidly upright person, not usually given to cursing- even cursing as mild as that- and so he found the sound of it faintly amusing.

His amusement was short-lived, however. It vanished in the next instant as Hermione turned toward him and pushed herself to her knees, then abruptly gasped and crumpled sideways, collapsing to the ground. She was already pushing herself back into a sitting position by the time he reached her, saying "it's all right, it was just… a little head rush, that's all," but he would have none of it. Grasping her firmly by the upper arms as she had done to him not long ago, he sought her eyes and sent her a quelling look, then turned her gently so she was sitting with her back to him, reached into his boot for the small dagger he kept there- he knew he'd find it there without quite knowing _how_ he knew- and carefully sliced down the length of her shirt, from collar to hem. Hermione gasped again as he peeled the two pieces of fabric away from her back- the one on her right sticking to her with blood, reluctant to let go- until they hung at her sides, the shirt now held onto her body by the sleeves only.

"Malfoy!" she exclaimed, forgetting, in her indignation, that she had recently progressed to a first-name basis with him, with excellent results- "what in God's name are you- _aaaoooww!_"

For he had just run a fingertip lightly over long slash wound that marred her shoulder. It was angry-looking, fiercely red with puffy edges, blazing hot to the touch; well on its way to becoming infected. He wanted to shake her, to yell at her, to demand why she had taken care of him while neglecting herself. Damn foolish girl; apparently quite good at spells and incantations, but sadly lacking in self-preservation skills and common sense.

"_Owww_," she whimpered again, as Draco prodded gently at the wound, "Draco, _don't_. It just grazed me, it's not deep-"

But Draco ignored her. Deep wasn't the issue here. Infection was the issue. Besides which, focusing on Hermione gave him a sense of purpose, and as long as he was able to hold onto that purpose, the drowsy haze which had invaded his mind seemed to clear a bit. It was still there, lingering on the periphery of his awareness, but much more manageable when he had something to concentrate on. Something like healing Hermione. He rummaged in the same pocket from which he'd pulled his miniaturized broomstick, and brought out a First Aid kit the size of a matchbox. He held it out to Hermione (so long as he didn't have his voice, he was useless when it came to magic) who restored it to its normal size with a word. Her voice was strained and when she handed it back to him he saw that her face was as well; taut and white with pain. He had that sudden urge to go after the Death Eaters and kill them with his bare hands again. Instead, he opened the kit, located a tube of healing salve, squeezed it onto the hateful red gash in her otherwise perfect skin, and began rubbing it gently in.

Hermione buried her face in her hands, clenching them in her unruly hair, (which was all the more wild with everything that had happened), and breathing in sharp, shallow little gasps through her teeth. It seemed the ointment stung more than a little. Draco hated that he was hurting her, though he had the distinct impression that he would have loved to have seen her in this kind of pain at any time during his school years. He found this profoundly disturbing, but didn't dwell on it- it all seemed very far-off, hazy and unimportant, anyway, those long-ago days of the past. Here and now, he focused on his hands running over her skin- (he really _hated_ the orange freckles on those hands, though he had a strange, calm assurance that they were a temporary thing, and so he tried to put it out of his mind)- on smoothing a large, square, magically self-adhesive bandage pad over the wound once he'd done all he could with the salve.

Then, heeding a sudden, strong impulse that surprised even him with its intensity, he did one more thing, an astonishing thing; bent his head and planted a kiss on the exposed skin of her other shoulder, the uninjured one.

Hermione made a sudden, strangled little sound as if someone had knocked all the wind out of her, and scrambled around to face him, eyes wide, lips parted in surprise, arms now folded over her chest, all that was keeping her newly backless shirt from falling off her body. For a long time the two of them stared at each other, breathing hard, completely at a loss for what to say or do next. Finally Hermione scooted backward on her bottom until she was sitting against the wall opposite Draco, her legs pulled up until her knees were beneath her chin. She _accio'd_ her wand from where it lay on the floor between them, bathing the tiny "room" with light, then swallowed hard and muttered, "I suppose I'd better send up a distress signal from right here. It doesn't look as if we're getting out of this on our own." Though she addressed Draco, she kept her eyes cast down on her wand as she spoke. Draco looked on as she spoke the incantation that would turn her wand into an emergency beacon to the Army of the Phoenix, his vision sliding out of focus again. The 'second wind' he'd miraculously gotten was fading fast. It was with sleepy fascination that he watched her carefully place the wand back down on the floor; now it stood perfectly upright on its own, a steadily pulsating beam of golden light shooting from its tip and straight up through the low rock ceiling of their sanctuary.

"I hope it can penetrate all the way through to the surface," Hermione was saying fretfully, "we've no way of knowing, really…" Her voice sounded far-off and echo-y to Draco's ears, and soon enough she trailed off entirely. He watched her a while longer, as she continued to refuse to look at him, but without eye contact or the sound of her voice speaking to him, he found that the darkness was encroaching again, creeping toward him from the corners of the room, and he began to succumb, sliding sideways and down the wall as his eyes slipped inexorably closed.

00000

He was being shaken. Hard. And it was terribly annoying.

He tried to throw up his hands, but it felt as though he were moving them through water. He cracked his eyes open and was just able to make out a blur of thick, dark, messy hair, surrounding a pale, fretful face. The girl's lips were moving, but he couldn't make out the sound of her voice. There was a faint but persistent rushing as of wind in his ears- that was the only sound he could hear any more. His entire body was lethargic; completely uncooperative. What was happening to him?

She was trying to pull him back up into a sitting position, gesturing emphatically at a wand in the middle of the room, which was shooting light right up through the ceiling; talking, talking. But he couldn't hear a word. She broke off abruptly, ran a hand through her tangled hair, frowned at him. All Draco could think of was that he was very thirsty. Moving slowly, carefully, precisely, he curled one hand as if around an invisible cup and raised it to his lips, a pantomime of drinking.

Why the hell couldn't he speak, again? And what was _with_ these bedamned orange freckles all over his arms? He wished he could remember, but his mind was foggier than ever, and getting more so all the time.

The girl took his meaning, though. She began to rummage through first her pockets, then his own. In doing so, her hands brushed scintillatingly close to… well, to a part of him that began to stir into life, despite the wretched condition he was in. He gritted his teeth and focused all of his will on subduing it- but even so, he could definitely appreciate that he _liked_ having her hands roaming his body in a way that was undeniably intimate, if a little on the brisk side. Liked it quite a bit, actually.

Then she pulled something out- a miniaturized waterskin that fit easily in the palm of her hand. Taking up his wand (Draco suffered a moment's indignation- he was every bit as particular about who touched his wand as he was about who touched- well, his _wand_- but it passed when he remembered two things; first, her wand was occupied with what was apparently a very important task, given all her recent gesticulations and attempts to explain- and second, he'd just got through thinking how he _didn't_ mind if she handled _either_ of his wands- the one that wasn't attached to him or the one that… er, was.)

Then she was using his wand to return the waterskin to its normal size, unscrewing the lid and holding it to his lips. Draco, in his awkward half-sitting, half-reclining position, sputtered and choked at first, but then managed to swallow some of the sweet, cool water. He thought in that moment that nothing had ever tasted so good.

When he indicated that he'd had enough, the girl put down the skin, then bent close over him and began saying the same thing over and over again, her face only inches away from his, her hair falling down around them both. He still couldn't hear her, but she spoke slowly enough, and repeated herself enough times, that he managed to read her lips- five words, it seemed- _you have to stay awake; you have to stay awake._ This was followed by a moment of thoughtful lip-chewing on her part, and then another four words; _I have an idea._

00000

Hermione realized at this point that there was no way Draco was going to manage to stay awake without something to focus his attention on. She would have sat right there and talked to him- she'd no idea what she would have said to while away the time until they were hopefully rescued, but she would have talked herself hoarse if she'd thought it would have done an iota of good. Draco Malfoy was not going to die on her watch, and not for her sake, damn it all.

She did not think it would do any good, however. He didn't appear to be hearing her anymore. She had no idea whether this was a result of the head injury or perhaps some sort of magical toxin released into his body by that weapon of Bellatrix's- she'd been trying very hard not to think about the possibility of it's having been poisoned, but to no avail. Her mind kept returning and returning, maddeningly, to that appalling possibility. _Please don't let him be poisoned. Please don't let him die. It's my fault if he's poisoned. It's my fault if he dies._

Then, abruptly, from the midst of this completely useless and extremely stressful cycle of thought, an idea occurred to her; a good idea- a _useful_ idea. The idea was this; if she'd been going to pass the time talking to Malfoy, she would probably have ended up telling him no more and no less than her entire life story- it would likely be hours before they were rescued and this was doubtless what she would have resorted to in order to fill up all that empty time. But now she couldn't do that; he couldn't hear her. But- she could _show_ him, couldn't she? Of course, she could show him in a pensieve. Everything, from the time she was old enough to remember. Hopefully it would be interesting enough to keep him awake, and maybe- just maybe- give the arrogant bastard (for he _was_ still an arrogant bastard, for all that he was fighting alongside them now) some valuable insight into Muggle life in general, and hers in particular. It would be a hell of an ice-breaker, that was for sure, and she couldn't help feeling that… well, that she would actually quite like for the ice between them to melt a little bit. Or maybe… it would be more accurate to say… she'd like it to melt a little bit _more_. The thawing process seemed perhaps to have already begun, after all- a little, involuntary shiver ran the length of her spine at the thought of that gentle and completely shocking kiss he'd planted on the bare skin of her back. What in Merlin's name had possessed him to do _that?_

What in Merlin's name had possessed her to _like_ it so much? To wish, in the deepest, secret part of her, that it had only been the first of many?

_Anyway_… inappropriate kisses and even more inappropriate responses aside, the pensieve idea was a good one. She mouthed as slowly and clearly as she could to Draco, _I have an idea_.

00000

Draco watched wide-eyed as Hermione created the pensieve. He had heard of them, of course; had seen them occasionally as well, sitting on various people's various shelves. But he'd never been inside one- and it seemed clear as Hermione drew thought after silvery thought from her head and into the bowl, that she intended to take him inside this one. The idea of it riveted him. He still felt drowsier than he ever remembered having felt in his life, but he was fighting the feeling now, with everything he was worth. He was going to get some insight into what made this bushy-haired, anxious-eyed, impossibly pretty girl tick; and he couldn't wait.

He didn't have to, for long.

A moment later Hermione was gripping him by the shoulder with one hand- using the other to gesture first at him, then herself, then the bowl she had created, with her thoughts like silver mist swirling gently about inside it. Apparently she planned on going in with him. Well, all the better. He nodded his head to indicate that he understood what she was proposing, and agreed.

She placed the bowl between them, then took one of his hands in her own, lacing their fingers together. Glancing up at him, she mouthed, _don't let go_.

He hadn't been planning on it.

Then she was leaning forward over the bowl, and he was doing the same, until their foreheads bumped together- drew apart- bumped together again- and then stayed that way, pressed gently up against each other, their hair mingling, brown and red- (_red? Why red?_)- and then the bowl was rushing up at them, and then they were inside.


	4. Chapter 4

The images played like a silent movie, to the backdrop of the rushing sound in Draco's ears. Draco saw:

_A very tiny brown-haired girl, no older than three, dressed in a polka-dotted bathing suit, eating an ice cream cone at the edge of the waves on a sun-drenched beach. She started, her mouth forming a perfect little 'o' of surprise, when a glob of her ice cream, which was liquefying under a summer sun the warmth of which was so real that Draco could actually _feel_ it, fell onto one of her bare, tanned feet_…

XXX

_The same girl, older now but not by much- four, or maybe a young five- jumping out of a Muggle transportation device that Draco had several times heard referred to as a 'car'- almost before it had stopped moving; her feet, clad in shiny black patent-leather shoes, slapping down on the pavement of a nicely manicured, squarish brick house with a sign out front; the sign had read "For Sale" originally, but someone had slapped a large red "SOLD" sticker over it, mostly obscuring the words beneath. As two adults- a man with thinning gingerish hair and wire-rimmed glasses and a woman whose exuberant brown locks matched the girl's- climbed out of the car's front seats in a more sedate manner, the little girl ran to the sign and hugged it- then turned a cartwheel on the lawn that caused her dress to flip right up over her head_…

(Draco smiled.)

XXX

_The girl, another year older, wearing a ballet leotard and tights, her hair barely contained in an extremely messy bun, taping a large construction paper sign to the inside of the living room window of the squarish brick house- Draco strained to see what was written there, but couldn't; the writing faced out, toward the street- as a tolerantly smiling adult looked on; it was neither of the parents (Draco had reached the conclusion that the couple he'd seen exiting the car earlier were, in fact, the girl's parents) but had a family resemblance nonetheless- she could easily be an aunt. Then, through the window the girl saw a car- the same car, a deep burgundy-red- turn from the street into the driveway, and she was off, clapping her hands once in delight and then racing out the door and down the walk, and now that he was outside along with her, Draco could read the childish but oh-so-carefully printed words on the sign. WELCOME HOME ALEXANDER GRANGER, it said; and the father was out of the car and going around to help the mother, who was climbing out carefully, so carefully, with a blue-blanketed bundle in her arms as the girl hopped from foot to foot in an agony of longing to see, to touch, to hold, to own. The father shooed her back up the front walk, but then allowed her to sit down on the stoop, and the mother sat beside her and passed the baby into the girl's eager arms. The father handed a camera which had been hanging from a strap around his neck to the aunt, who'd just come outside, and settled himself on the other side of the girl for a first photo of the newly expanded family_…

(This whole scene was somewhat surprising to Draco- he hadn't been aware the girl had any siblings. He'd assumed her an only child, like himself. He wasn't sure why. He just... thought he'd have known if it were otherwise. Looking on, he saw…)

XXX

_A birthday party. Tables festooned with pink cloths, arranged out on the grass of the brick house's backyard. Adults in lawn chairs, sipping iced tea and lemonade, eating crudités off a platter as children raced about the yard, laughing, chasing, shrieking. His brown-haired girl was a couple of years older than when he'd seen her last, wearing a shimmery pale-blue party dress, her hair tamed into pigtails, a paper party hat- a contraption Draco had never encountered before- perched atop her head. He followed as she cavorted over to a smallish square table in a corner of the yard; gifts were piled on the grass at the table's base, the table itself given entirely over to a large, decadent pink-frosted cake with the words "HAPPY 8TH BIRTHDAY HERMIONE!" piped onto it in dark brown chocolate icing, surrounded by dozens of pastel candy roses. The girl reached out to touch one of them, gently- reverently, almost- but at just that instant something a lot more forceful than her finger impacted the cake table- two boys chasing a ball, trying to beat each other to it, not paying adequate attention to where they were going, crashed into it at the same time, knocking the table, cake and all, sideways to the grass. The birthday girl clapped both hands to her mouth, her eyes going impossibly wide for a second or two- and then she sat down hard on the ground, the voluminous skirts of her sky-colored dress spreading out around her in a perfect arc of frothy blue fabric, and dropped her face into her hands and cried, and cried as the boys- slightly older cousins, perhaps, one with a wiry frizz of hair on his head, the other with prominent buck teeth, scuffed their feet and hung their heads in shame. Adults came on the run- the girl's father arrived and hunkered down beside her, draping an arm about her tiny, heaving shoulders- but still she cried, until- here came either a very large baby or a small toddler, still young enough to be unsteady on his feet, wobbling over with an anxious expression in his big brown eyes- eyes that were identical to his older sister's. He hovered over her for a moment, but failing to catch her attention was soon distracted by the enormous glob of smashed cake lying nearby on the ground, and moving with sudden and astonishing speed, too quickly for any of the adults to intervene, he hurled himself straight into it, flailing about in the colorful goop with gleeful abandon, screaming and chortling in a transport of delight. The girl looked up at this, and actually cracked a smile through her tears, and then the baby- Alexander, Draco thought; her brother Alexander- was being pulled from the mess by his mother. But he managed to squirm out of her arms- he was quite slippery now- and toddled over to Hermione, holding something out to her in his chubby baby fist; a half-smushed candy rose. She took it from him, her smile widening, and popped it in her mouth- and then she was pulling him into her arms, crushing him up against her, and her party dress was absolutely ruined, it had cake crumbs and frosting all over it, but it didn't matter a bit because she was laughing now, rocking her brother in her arms and laughing every bit as hard as she'd been crying a moment ago, and everyone else had begun to laugh along her with her, children and adults alike. She kissed the frosting from the baby's nose, smacking her lips at the taste of it._

(Draco's own lips curved upward again at the sight, but his smile froze and then died on his face a heartbeat later, died at what he saw next-)

XXX

_The girl barely looked any older at all- she may still have been in her eighth year, or perhaps only just into her ninth. It was a lovely sunny day and she was walking across a green field- at first Draco took it for a park- and so he couldn't understand why she was dressed the way she was- in a very formal dress, as frothy as the one she'd been wearing on her birthday but purest black from collar to hem, her hair pulled severely back into a thick French Braid that was so abnormally smooth she hardly looked like herself- or why it was that she looked so sad. No, more than sad, she looked- haggard, as if she hadn't slept in days. _(No child should look like that, ever, Draco thought, with a rush of indignation toward her parents. What on earth was going on here? And then he saw what was going on- he understood, though he suddenly wished to Merlin that he hadn't.) _It wasn't a park- she was passing neatly regimented rows of grey stones and was, as it turned out, not alone either; she was a part of a small procession, all in black, that were making their way toward a mound of newly turned earth and beside it- a gaping, waiting hole. The mourners gathered at the graveside, Hermione among them. Several adults tried to touch her, offering her comfort, support- but she shrugged them all off. The woman Draco had assumed to be an aunt was there; likewise the careless, cake-ruining older cousins. Hermione's parents were there, but they did not try to touch her because her father was too busy supporting her mother, who looked entirely unable to stand alone. Alexander was not there. _

_Except, of course, that he was. _

_Beside the hole in the ground rested the coffin; an impossibly small, baby-blue coffin _(and coffins shouldn't come in that size, Draco thought sickly, there should be no such thing as a coffin that small, no such thing on earth-) _and as Draco watched, a few words were spoken by a man in a high-collared black robe that looked almost- but not quite- wizardly in nature- and then the coffin was set onto a platform over the hole and slowly lowered in. The mother began to struggle against her husband in an attempt to reach it, but he restrained her until, without warning, she fainted in his arms. He lowered her to the grass and Draco could see that he was shouting, and there was a rush of relatives to her side; aunts fanning and uncles gesturing wildly and milling uselessly about- but the little girl only took advantage of the commotion to move right up to the edge of the hole and stare down at the tiny coffin which now rested at the bottom; unimpeded by any well-meaning adults who might otherwise have attempted to lead her away. She looked down for a very long time, her eyes huge and haunted, red but dry- she looked entirely cried out. In one hand she held a bunch of small, draggly-looking white daisies- it appeared she had picked them on her walk here. In the other she clutched a scruffy-looking teddy bear with a wind-up key sticking out of its back. As Draco watched she tossed the daisies into the hole; they landed scattered about the top of the coffin. Then she slowly wound the toy. He could only assume that music began to play as she raised it to her face, nuzzled _her_ cheek against it for a moment, then kissed it on the nose just as she had done to her brother when he'd been covered head to toe in frosting from her birthday cake. She threw the bear into the hole. She threw her head back to the sky. She howled._

XXX

Draco ripped himself from the pensieve, gasping. Wide awake for the moment, his own injuries seemed distant and unimportant to him just then. He had never seen such a powerful display of raw grief in all his life- and that was saying something; they were in the middle of a war, after all. Mother of Merlin, how had the child survived that sort of trauma with no visible scars in adulthood? He looked over at Hermione, on the other side of the bowl. She was ashen. Trembling. Had her arms wrapped around herself, as if she were suddenly cold. Without putting a whole lot of conscious thought into what he was doing, Draco gently moved the pensieve aside and then, though it required a monumental physical effort considering the state he was in, reached out to her both-handed and drew her to him. She resisted for a second or two, but then came- scooting over into his warmth, allowing his arms to wrap around her, and then crashing her head down on his shoulder, and sobbing.

He got the impression that she had been holding this in for a very long time, because she wept with the abandon of a child. He just held on and let her get it out of her system. It took him several moments to realize, with some surprise, that he was stroking her hair, combing out the tangles as best he could with his fingers. He was amazed by its softness. He hadn't expected hair this bushy to be so soft. It took him even longer to realize that he was mouthing the same words to her over and over again, his lips moving lightly against the top of her head- _I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't know, I didn't know._

It was obvious from what he'd seen so far that the girl had come from a non-magical background and he felt for some reason as though this fact bore looking down upon- but he couldn't think why. The girl, her parents, her aunts and uncles and cousins, they were _people_, real people, as real as he and his own family. They shared real joy, real grief, real love. What was there to look down upon in that? He felt vaguely sorry for them, for everything they were missing out on by being Muggles, but that was all… and really, he realized, it wasn't even necessary. _They _didn't know what they were missing, and besides, they had their compensations- things like cars and light switches and pointy paper party hats. They had come up with some pretty ingenious inventions, he had to admit, in order to make life without magic comfortable for themselves. He rather thought he'd like to sit in a car one day.

At long last Hermione's sobs faded to hiccups, and she raised her head and met his gaze, tried to give him a reassuring smile but couldn't quite manage it. She said something, but he couldn't make out what it was. A final teardrop that had been caught in her thick, dark lashes freed itself at last and streaked down her face- Draco reached out and caught it as if in a dream, wiping it away with his thumb.

Then Hermione was pulling the pensieve back over- apparently she had more to show him yet. She took a moment to check her wand- the stream of golden light, their distress beacon to the Army, was still as strong as ever. Then, using his wand, she checked the time. Both of them were rather surprised to learn that they had been in the pensieve over two hours already. Draco caught her by the hand and gestured at the bowl. _Are you sure?_ He tried to ask. _We can stop, you know._ She took his meaning, but she shook her head. She didn't want to stop. Sitting next to one another now, instead of on opposite sides of the bowl, they leaned their heads back over it together. The silvery mist swirled up to greet them. Draco saw:

_The little girl another year older, in a primary school uniform though she looked nearly ready for Hogwarts, sitting cross-legged at the foot of a tree and reading a book in what Draco assumed to be a park. Her parents were nearby, reclining on a blanket, and the whole scene should have been quite idyllic, except for two things; first, there was the way her parents looked- not significantly better than they had at the funeral. The mother, in particular, was a changed woman; her once bouncy brown hair gone lank, her once bright brown eyes gone dull. The father's face was pinched and white. It was clear that Hermione had distanced herself from them intentionally. Then there was the group of laughing children playing a short distance away, at the edge of a brook. Some had removed their shoes and were wading- some skipping stones- all laughing in a spirit of fun and no-more-school-today camaraderie. Hermione kept stealing longing glances at them and two or three of them were glancing back at her- but their eyes were mocking, not kind. They were sniggering at her. A couple of boys put their heads together and whispered, then one of them picked up a pebble- but instead of skipping it over the water, aimed it at Hermione instead. It thwacked against her book, causing her to drop it in surprise. The boys sniggered harder. Draco had the urge to knock their stupid, mean-spirited heads together. The parents, wrapped in their private misery, noticed nothing. _

_Then a girl with blonde pigtails, one of the group by the water, saw what was happening. As the boy was aiming yet another pebble at Hermione, this girl marched up to him and knocked it from his hands. She gave him what appeared to be a stern talking-to, followed by a little shove- waited for both boys to move off a bit, then approached Hermione, who had raised her book to cover her face- whether to protect herself from more pebbles or, perhaps, in an attempt to conceal the fact that tears were threatening, Draco wasn't sure. Quite possibly both. The girl with blonde pigtails and kind eyes squatted in front of her. Hermione hesitantly lowered the book. The two spoke, the blonde girl gesturing behind her at the water. Hermione's gaze followed, and one or two of the other children saw her looking and waved, beckoning her over. The pigtailed girl stood again; held out her hand. Hermione appeared in an agony of indecision, which Draco couldn't understand for the life of him. Why didn't she just take it? Then Hermione turned to glance at her parents, and Draco watched the resignation settle over her face, like a blanket snuffing out the light. She shook her head no. Pigtail girl cocked her own head to the side and spoke one more time, but Hermione simply shook her head again, causing her would-have-been playmate to shrug, turn away, and return to her friends. Hermione looked as if she wanted to sink into the ground. Only for a moment, though- then, as Draco watched, he could actually _see_ her gathering her courage together, and with a deep breath she put aside her book, stood, and followed the blonde down to the water's edge. _

_Blondie turned around and smiled, reached out and took her hand, and as easily as that she was a part of the group- amazing how quickly children could connect. It was to be short-lived, however. Just as the two girls were stooping to admire the flash of a small silver fish in the water, here came the parents at a run- the mother shouting and waving her arms about frantically. Hermione whirled around to face her and if she'd looked like she'd wanted to sink into the ground before, it was nothing to now- her face was burning with humiliation and she was obviously wishing herself a billion miles away. The mother was ranting on, pointing at Hermione and then at the water, mouth working furiously all the while, a hectic, ill-looking flush on her face. The father was attempting to soothe her, but with no success whatsoever. Draco had a sudden epiphany that the baby brother, Alexander Granger, must have drowned. That had to be what this was all about. The baby had drowned and now the mother was permanently just a bit off her rocker, convinced that despite the age difference, and the fact that the water here was no more than a foot deep, her ten-year-old daughter was in danger of sharing the fate of her two-year-old son. Draco's heart ached as he watched Hermione, slump-shouldered with embarrassment and defeat, follow her parents away from the group of children by the water, as the rock-throwing boy from earlier (bloody little bastard! Draco thought furiously) cavorted about with his eyes rolling and his tongue lolling out, one finger drawing circles in the air beside his temple. It was clearly a commentary on the mother's sanity- or lack thereof. Just before Hermione passed out of range, he lobbed another pebble at her back, hitting her squarely between the shoulder blades. Draco wanted to _wring his fucking neck_. Hermione did not look back._

XXX

_Here was a kitchen; it was a part of the squarish brick house that Draco had not seen before. It was so chock full of odd Muggle gadgets he couldn't even begin to puzzle out, that he stopped trying almost as soon as he'd begun, and focused his attention instead on the girl at the round oak table, books spread out about her, diligently working on what Draco assumed to be homework. Her hair was held back from her face by a headband, but otherwise free, tumbling down her back in an unruly- and completely recognizable- mess. This was how her hair had looked all through Hogwarts, he thought, sure of this suddenly although most other details of his school days remained difficult to pin down at the moment. It was still how her hair looked now. _

_Deeply engrossed in her work, she started violently at a sound Draco couldn't hear. Following her gaze when she looked up, he saw a large barn owl perched on the outer sill of the kitchen window, tapping on the glass repeatedly with its beak. It took him a moment to grasp why it was that the girl looked so shocked- and then it hit him- this was it, he was witnessing her first contact with the wizarding world. She'd never received owl post before in her life- had no idea that such a thing as a post owl existed. He watched as she stood, gripping the edge of the table for a moment as if to steady herself, then made her way cautiously toward the window. The owl, seeing that it had her attention now, tapped once more, then cocked its head meaningfully and extended a foot- showing her, through the glass, the tiny scroll attached to its leg. Hermione's eyes widened and, throwing caution to the wind, she opened the window, her lips moving as she crooned to the bird. Draco watched as she removed the letter and the owl took flight. He recognized the heavy, cream colored parchment with the Hogwarts crest, of course. She took the letter back to her seat at the table, opening it on the way, and sat down to read. By the time she'd finished scanning the letter's contents, her eyes were absolutely huge. She read it again, and then again, her lips moving slightly as she did so, her mind struggling to comprehend what she was seeing. The next time she looked up, though, her eyes were shining- there was no doubt, no hesitation in them. She wanted in- she wanted to be a part of this newly discovered world. _

_Draco soon saw what it was that had made her head snap up that way; her parents were home, entering the room together in crisp-looking clothing of the Muggle professional style. Draco recalled hearing at one time that they worked together in some sort of Muggle medical practice, something highly specialized_…_ teeth, was it? (He'd always thought it absurd that Muggles had different healers for eyes, for ears, for teeth, for feet. Of all the convoluted nonsense! Every properly trained mediwizard was more than capable of treating any area of the body- much more sensible in Draco's opinion.) At any rate- Hermione leapt to her feet, brandishing the letter and nearly dancing with excitement, and Draco watched as first the father and then the mother read it_…_ and an enormous argument ensued. The father seemed more or less neutral, but the mother- woah. She just about went berserk, screaming and wailing; at one point she left the room and returned a second later clutching a framed photo of baby Alexander. Gesturing wildly, she pointed at the photo and then at Hermione and finally the letter where it lay, now, on the table- Draco could imagine what she was saying, something along the lines of how they'd already lost one child and didn't want to send the other away_…_ a lousy guilt-trip to pull on a child, in Draco's opinion. Little Hermione stood her ground, though, with a defiance that her parents obviously were not accustomed to seeing in her. It reached the point where her mother actually went to slap her- the father caught her hand out of the air, then pulled her bodily from the room. _

_Hermione stared after them for a moment, head cocked slightly as if listening to sounds of a continuing fight elsewhere in the house- then collapsed back into her chair, crossed her arms on the table in front of her, right over where the letter lay, dropped her head onto them and cried, her little shoulders heaving. Draco wanted desperately to gather her into his arms, rock her, comfort her as he'd just comforted her older self. He actually caught his pensieve-self beginning to reach out to her. Just then the parents returned to the room. The mother was silent, blotchy-faced from crying, sullen. It was the father who went down on one knee beside his daughter, placed a hand gently on her shoulder, causing her to raise her head. He said something to her, his expression grave, but it was clear from the way she threw her arms around his neck that it was the answer she'd wanted to hear. As the scene faded, Draco was left feeling guilty for some reason, that this little girl had had to fight so hard, face down such adversity, for something he'd always taken for granted- a Hogwarts education. What an ordeal it had been for her simply to _reach_ the school- and what would she find there? Some who would welcome her, yes, but many who would not. Draco had a sick certainty that he had been heartily among the latter._

XXX

_And this, it transpired, was what he saw next- seven years of Hogwarts, condensed. So strange to be watching his classmates, his friends, his teachers, through the eyes of someone who'd attended school at the exact same time as he had, but whose experience had been so vastly different. He saw it all; the early awkwardness, the bossiness that had acted as a cover for her insecurity in this strange new world, the troll-in-the-bathroom incident that had led to the formation of the "Golden Trio", the adventures they'd shared of both the fun and the terrifying variety. Outings to Hogsmeade, quiet nights studying and playing chess by the fire in the Gryffindor common room, Winter snowball fights and Christmas mornings; and Hermione, solo, often sneaking out to the library at night the way others snuck to the Astronomy tower- and then there were the horrifying brushes with death that came, it seemed, nearly every year- the Shrieking Shack, the Department of Mysteries- through it all he watched her grow in knowledge, in confidence, in ability. _

_He watched her glide into the Yule Ball on the arm of Victor Krum- watched his younger self staring at her with open-mouthed astonishment, his own date forgotten for the moment, and he knew that in that instant, his younger self had known she was beautiful, though he wouldn't have admitted it, not for the world. And speaking of his younger self- he watched seven years of torture that he had inflicted on Hermione- taunts and sneers and vile names, and worse- hexes and mean-spirited spells (he'd charmed her hair irreversibly chartreuse in sixth year, forcing her to cut it all off to her chin and resulting in, he now saw, night after night of stifled crying in her bed- it made him sick with shame to watch it)- and once, just once, shouldering her out of the way in a corridor between classes, with such force that he'd knocked her down, causing her to scrape her knees bloody on the rough-hewn stone floor. He decided then and there that he would make that up to her- though how, he couldn't say. _

He'd find a way, though, he thought fleetingly, before he was pulled along into the next swirl of memory, and the next- Merlin help him, he would find a way.


	5. Chapter 5

_He watched her experiment with kissing Harry- he watched her experiment with kissing Ron. This made him want to punch them both in the face, for reasons unknown to him- he was absurdly relieved when neither kiss appeared to lead to anything more serious. Victor Krum was a different story, however. He watched her maintain her pen-friendship with him all throughout her time at Hogwarts, culminating in a short romance during the latter half of her seventh year. He watched the end of this romance as well, though it inspired in him not so much relief as absolute, seething, red rage. It happened during spring holidays, just weeks before graduation. Hermione had stayed at Hogwarts, and Krum had come to visit her; he was staying at an inn down in Hogsmeade village. Draco watched Hermione walk down to the village for the third day in a row- the third in a series of "dates" with Krum during which the two of them would walk hand-in-hand, browse village shops, sip Butterbeer at a secluded table way in the back of the Three Broomsticks, occasionally indulge in quick, chaste kisses- all Hermione seemed willing, as of yet, to give. On this day Harry and Ron walked down from the castle with her, before separating and heading toward the Quidditch supply shop which had opened in the village some months before. They'd been speaking earnestly to Hermione all the way, both wearing expressions of concern and misgiving- it appeared to Draco as if they were trying to warn her off of Krum. He didn't know what their reasons were, but he found himself wishing that Hermione would take their advice. He didn't like that skulking, duck-footed bastard one bit, he decided- never mind that he'd idolized him all throughout his teenage years. _

_His dislike increased exponentially when on this day, just moments after meeting Hermione at the pub, Krum attempted to talk her into going up to his room, taking her by the elbow and steering her toward the stairs, ducking his head in order to speak directly, persuasively, into her ear. Hermione, however, wasn't having it. She pulled out of his grasp and gently laughed off his advances, shaking her head and wagging a finger at him, then attempted to placate him by going up on her tiptoes and offering him yet another of those sweet little kisses of hers- this one just a hint more lingering, but nothing like what Krum apparently had in mind. Taking him by the hand, she then drew him away from the stairs to the inn's sleeping quarters- the stairs that made Draco's mind flash the word DANGER-DANGER-DANGER over and over again like a signal beacon- and out into the street. The two of them passed a pleasant enough day around the town, and if Krum was a bit more sullen and churlish than usual Hermione failed to notice- or at least failed to let on if she did. Draco knew something bad was coming, though- he just knew it. The whole memory was tinged, somehow, with a sense of foreboding. It didn't happen until nearly dusk. Krum seemed anxious to return to the inn. Draco- his fists clenched, both in the pensieve and in reality- thought he could bloody well guess why. Hermione thwarted him once again, however, although this time it seemed wholly uncontrived- they were passing the small village bookstore, which was on the verge of closing, when she appeared to remember something she needed inside. Draco watched as she attempted to cajole Krum into the store, smiling and tugging on his arm, pointing out the hours posted in the window, reassuring him that her errand wouldn't- _couldn't_- take long, as the store would be closed in ten minutes. Krum, however, declined to accompany her in. They spoke for a moment, apparently designating a meeting spot, and then parted; Hermione into the store, Krum slouching off around the corner. _

_Draco lingered in the shop with Hermione watching as she made her way over to the Quidditch section- the only section in the store in which she didn't appear to feel at home. She poked about for several minutes, in increasing agitation as closing time came upon her and she still hadn't found what she was looking for. The shopkeeper approached her, presumably to tell her it was time to leave, but she asked a question, gesturing toward the shelves of books with mingled frustration and appeal that he couldn't help smiling. He led her over to the counter and unlocked a glass case behind it; a case that Draco knew from his own experience with the shop contained the rarest and most expensive books it had to offer. Plucking one out, the man handed it across the counter to Hermione, who gave it a cursory glance, making sure it was the one she was after, opened the front cover to find the price, stifled a gasp, swallowed hard, and handed it back, saying something as she pulled a galleon bag out of her pocket. The shopkeeper nodded, smiled again, and with a flourish of his wand gift-wrapped the book. Draco just managed to see that it was something about the history of Quidditch in Bulgaria before it was completely covered in blue and gold paper. She was buying a gift for Krum! As if that skulking bastard didn't have enough disposable income of his own- here this innocent teenaged schoolgirl was just about breaking herself to feed his _goddamn ego_- Draco wanted to throttle him._

_And then they were off, out the door, Hermione and he, she tucking the brightly wrapped under book under her arm as a secretive smile tugged at her lips- and tucking her galleon bag, which now contained no more than a couple of knuts (to Draco's continuing indignation), back into her pocket. He was with her as she reached the Three Broomsticks, which apparently had been the chosen meeting place, stepped inside, glanced around, frowned in puzzlement at Krum's absence, completely failed to notice Ron and Harry at the bar, stepped back out again, looked up and down the empty, darkening street- then cocked her head abruptly to the side, as if hearing some small but surprising sound. Draco felt his gut clench as she followed that sound he couldn't hear- followed around the corner of the building and into the mouth of a narrow brick alley which separated it from the shop next door. There, several feet further in, was Krum- and he wasn't alone. He was locked in a passionate embrace with- Draco felt the bottom of his stomach drop out entirely- Pansy. Hermione's hand flew to cover her mouth and Krum, catching the movement from the corner of his eye, looked up; shoved Pansy roughly away; said something to her that caused her to scream back at him, burst into angry tears, and flee the alleyway, knocking a shell-shocked Hermione aside with rather more force than was necessary._

_Draco had to make a conscious effort to keep his attention focused on Hermione rather than (that cheating little _slut_) Pansy- it had never even occurred to him before that Zacharius Smith might not have been the first person she'd been unfaithful with- it was a blow to realize that Pansy had been making a fool of him since well before graduation had rolled around. Thank Merlin he'd gotten himself shut of that bitch. But this wasn't the time to dwell on it- there was Hermione to consider, and the scene that was playing out now between her and Krum, who was apparently trying to smooth things over- (how stupid did he think Hermione _was_? Draco thought furiously- she'd never allow herself to be placated that way- she'd damn well _better_ not-) and she didn't. Shock was being replaced by mounting anger in her expression, and abruptly, as Krum was, apparently, explaining what had happened with a sheepish expression and many gestures toward the direction in which Pansy had vanished, no doubt trying to convince Hermione that the other girl had been entirely to blame- he just an innocent victim caught by surprise or some such bollocks- she cut him off by slicing her hand through the air, shouting a few well-chosen words, and hurling the gift-wrapped book directly at his face. _

_The change that came over Krum then was sudden and complete. In two steps he crossed the alley to Hermione, grabbed her by the shoulders, and slammed her backward into the wall of the pub. Holding her wedged between himself and the building, he shouted something directly into her face, gesturing again toward where Pansy had made her exit, then toward Hermione herself, and finally, pointedly, toward the second story of his inn, which was directly across the street. His message was clear- _I wouldn't have to look elsewhere if I were getting what I wanted from you._ Hermione, unable to move her arms, spat directly into his face and kneed him simultaneously in the groin. Krum doubled over, but grabbed her by the hair as he did so, dragging her down to her knees along with him- then slammed her head against the building's wall with as much force as he could muster, and backhanded her at the same time, hard enough to split her lip. Snarling, he pinned her- she was now completely dazed- face down on the ground, wedged a knee between her thighs and gripped the waistline of the Muggle blue jeans she was wearing with both hands, obviously with the intent of yanking them down. Pensieve-Draco lost it completely and launched himself at Krum, knowing it was hopeless, not really caring- he couldn't just stand idly by and watch this happen- and then Harry and Ron were there, out of nowhere at all, and with fists flying- a pair of avenging angels with absolute murder in their eyes. And just like that, Draco found years of hatred for "Potty and the Weasel" melting away, to be replaced by a newfound respect, and even gratitude- (thank you for saving her, thank you, thank you, I couldn't have watched that, I'd have gone mad.) _

He lingered just long enough to see the two-against-one carnage really get underway, then tore himself out of the pensieve for the second time, with such violence that he actually fell backward to sprawl on the floor of their little cavern sanctuary, panting, his head spinning, but his mind clear again. He remembered who he was (and even why he had these god-awful freckles all over him); he remembered who Hermione was. He remembered that he had strongly disliked her for a very long time, and by all rights, still should. He actually tried to reclaim those feelings for a moment- it was no good. All he felt now was a burning desire to find Victor Krum- track him down to the end of the earth if necessary- and bash _his_ head into a wall, again- and again- and again. A second later Hermione was leaning over him, her face white as wax and faintly ill-looking- if seeing that memory had been hard on Draco, what must it have been like for her?- her lips forming his name, worriedly, over and over again. He reached up, feeling as if he were pushing his hand through water instead of air, and cupped her cheek, his thumb going to her lips, tracing the spot where Krum's hand had impacted them, splitting them open, making them bleed. _Where is he?_ He tried to ask, forgetting again that he couldn't speak. _I'm gonna kill him. I'm gonna kill him._

Hermione seemed to take his meaning, smiled and shook her head. She mouthed the words _Harry and Ron_, then slammed her right fist into the palm of her left hand, as if to say that her two best friends and longtime defenders had done a good enough job of making Krum pay. Still, Draco couldn't help but wish there were just a _little_ payback left over for him… and just like that he realized, lying flat on his back on the cold rock floor of a tiny secluded cavern that could very well become a tiny secluded death trap, that there was a _reason_ for the twists and turns his life had taken up to now- for his breakup with Pansy, for the fact that none of the girls he'd dated since, no matter how beautiful or well bred or rich they had been, had ever amounted to much more than a weekend fling- a reason for listening to his mentor Severus Snape over his own family, for turning his back on Voldemort's cause and taking up life as a spy for the Army of the Phoenix- a larger reason for his having been sent on this assignment in Snape's absence, much as he'd protested at the time. A reason for the surge of protectiveness he'd felt when Hermione'd been hurt, there on the broomstick behind him- and for his own injuries, for the lapse in his memory that had allowed him to enter her pensieve with a clean slate and see and understand things from her point of view- it had all been leading up to this moment of revelation in which, stunned, he realized that over the course of the past few hours (for it had been hours, now- over eleven hours, in fact, had slipped away into the mists of the pensieve and the story of Hermione's life-) he had fallen for Hermione Granger.

He could hardly come to grips with the fact that this had happened- what had the catalyst been? Probably a combination of the Polyjuice, which might have tempered his outlook on this longtime enemy with some of the affection Ron held for her, and the concussion, which had addled his brains and swept away all his preconceived notions about the insufferable know-it-all, allowing him to see her for the intelligent, courageous, outspoken and beautiful- _yes, beautiful, bushy hair and all- _witch that she was- (all qualities he valued in a woman)- _and_ the experience of being shown her life in every minute detail… all these circumstances had combined to bring his guard crumbling down; his heretofore impenetrable defenses against love, erected when he'd discovered the woman he'd planned to marry in the arms of another man (a Hufflepuff, all right? A _Hufflepuff!_), now so much useless rubble. Whatever the reason, though, whatever the catalyst had ultimately been, the result was undeniable-

Merlin help him, he had fallen hard.

The room was spinning for him- both figuratively and literally. Her hair was hanging down in a rich, dark curtain as she leaned over him, and the smell of it sent his senses reeling. He felt out of control- delirious. He knew he was probably dying of blood loss. He would probably never see the sky again.

Looking up at her, though, he felt as if he'd come home.

Bloody hell. If someone had tried to convince him just one day ago that he'd be feeling like this now… well, he wouldn't have bought it, and _they_ would have run a very good chance of finding themselves on the wrong side of a hex or two.

It was the bloody unlikeliest thing… and he had absolutely no reason to suppose that she had fallen prey to the circumstances as he had, or felt even remotely the same. So what the flying fuck was he supposed to do about it?

Well, he supposed he could begin by ascertaining whether or not Hermione had, in fact, experienced a similar epiphany. And there was one very pleasant method of doing so, that presented itself to him immediately. He pushed his hand up through the strange, liquefied air again, pushed it right through the curtain of Hermione's hair, caught her gently at the nape of her neck (she was so warm there, her hair so soft), and, as her dark eyes widened with understanding at what he was doing, pulled her down, sealing her lips to his.

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Hermione's mind was going a mile a minute, which wasn't unusual for her. What _was_ unusual for her was that the thoughts cycling through it so rapidly were mostly gibberish. Half-crazed, skittering thoughts about inappropriate kisses and even more inappropriate responses, about years and years of enmity, about _what in Merlin's name would Harry and Ron say?_

What was even _more_ unusual for her was that she wasn't actually paying the least bit of attention to the things her mind was screaming at her. She was far too busy getting swept up in the moment- in the sudden, powerful and complete _rightness_ of it. No other kiss she'd ever had had provoked a response like this from her- the desire to simply lose herself in the experience, let it wash up and over and around her, let it carry her away.

Something deeper and more primal than her conscious mind was urging her to _keep going, don't stop_- and that's what she did. Being the one "on top", as it were, she found that she had almost complete control over the length and the depth of the kiss- and she liked that. Relaxing, she allowed herself to melt down into Draco, her chest pressing into his (he winced and sucked in a sharp breath at this, but didn't stop kissing her), one of her hands slipping under his head to cushion and raise it a tiny bit- anything to pull him closer, closer.

It was the most bizarre thing to be kissing Draco Malfoy, and to know that she was kissing Draco Malfoy, but to be looking down into Ron's cobalt eyes, to be tangling her fingers in Ron's coppery hair- surreal, somehow, and it was probably that very surrealism that enabled her to keep on with it; the fact that it didn't feel real to her. _Right_, but not real. It felt like a dream, like a lovely delirium. Still, it was faintly disturbing, this odd feeling of kissing two men at once- but that was a problem that was easily rectified; she simply allowed her eyes to slip shut, and she was with Draco; she knew it because he held her differently than Ron ever had- there was far more passion here; more certainty and confidence- Draco's innate self-assurance-bordering-on-arrogance, rather than Ron's endearing, but not very arousing, fumblage. Draco even _smelled _different- faintly but distinctly- the Polyjuice had superimposed Ron's scent on top of his, but somehow Draco's lingered underneath; subdued- but not banished.

It was a "darker" scent, somehow, than Ron's, who mostly smelled like outdoors and clean sweat and Quidditch leathers. Draco's scent, on the other hand, was… well, if she had to pin it down, she supposed she'd say brandy and smoke. Smoke from a fire that burned in a grate at the foot of a bed- a magnificent ebony four-poster with black satin sheets.

It was an entirely erotic scent.

It was driving her senses wild- and driving her inhibitions far, far away.

Giving a tiny moan against his lips- a moan which he felt, even though he couldn't hear it; which sent shivers down his spine- she opened her mouth to his… at the same time throwing a leg over him so that instead of simply kneeling over him, as she had been, she was now straddling him quite firmly. It was intoxicating to her to be taking the initiative like this- it was something she had never done before. Sure, she had initiated those little kisses with Krum that Draco'd witnessed in the pensieve, but those had been more… more of a defensive tactic than anything else- designed to placate him, and avoid ending up in a situation… well, a situation just like this one, for instance. She knew now that she had been star-struck with Krum- it had been a weakness of hers in her teenage years, dating all the way back to Professor Lockhart- but on some deep level she had always understood that he had been inherently dangerous and wrong. So she'd gone on the defensive, but this…

This was anything but defensive.

She was taking charge and it felt _good_.

Breaking the kiss for a moment, she pulled back long enough to peel the remains of her shirt off- backless since Draco had sliced through it hours ago, she figured it left little to the imagination anyway, and it no longer seemed worth the effort to keep up with holding it on. Wadding it up, she shoved it under his head to cushion it, opening her eyes, by necessity, in the process, and catching his own- something electric (not that Draco would have understood the analogy, of course) passed between them.

Tilting her head slightly to the side to allow for better access (less bumpage of noses), she attacked his lips again- only to be brought up short when he caught her face in both his hands and pushed it back, gently yet firmly, to a distance of several inches. He then mouthed something to her- slowly, distinctly. When she failed to cotton on the first time, he mouthed it again, all the while holding her with both his hands, fingers tangled in the hair at her temples. It was obviously important to him that she understand what he was trying to tell her at this moment.

She furrowed her brow in concentration, attempting to puzzle out the silent words.

He mouthed it again. And again.

And finally she understood.

It was simple; three words, over and over.

_I'm not Ron._

_I'm not Ron_- Merlin, the dear- he reckoned she was only doing this because she thought she was kissing _Ron?_ Nothing could be further from the truth! She'd been there, done that- and it was _nothing _to this.

One side of her mouth quirked down in an impatient sort of half-frown. Then she _accio'd _his wand from where it lay nearby and promptly spelled out a message in flaming letters in the air;

_I know who you are, Draco Malfoy. And one way or another, I am GOING to keep you awake._

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(A/N: Next chapter will have adult content!)


	6. Chapter 6

(The warning I gave at the end of Chapter 5 still applies, and I am repeating it here. This chapter contains adult content. If you don't like smut, don't read this. I repeat, if you don't like smut, _don't read this_. Or, skip to the double rows of zeros, that look like this-)

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Things progressed quickly from there. The wand was quickly discarded, after being used to renew the pain-alleviation spell Hermione had placed on Draco earlier; all sorts of clothing were discarded shortly thereafter. Frantic kissing- the sort that left lips bruised and swollen- resumed. Hands roamed everywhere- Draco used just one of his to unclasp Hermione's simple, modest white bra with a swiftness and dexterity that unnerved her for a moment- but it vanished from her mind an instant later, along with all other semblance of rational thought, as his warm hands pushed the straps down her arms and then moved to encompass her newly liberated breasts. And Merlin, did he know what to do with them.

The only comment she could think to make was something along the lines of, "mmmhh…ohhhhhhhh!" as she arched into his warm, undeniably skilled hands. A small corner of her brain was screaming at her that she ought to be highly indignant of just how skilled those hands _were_- but she quashed it. Take-charge attitude aside, she was still very much a novice in the area of physical love- and if there was one thing Hermione Granger accepted the value of, it was a good teacher. She needed someone more knowledgeable than she to guide her through this experience… and the easy, practiced manner in which Draco was thumbing her nipples at the moment recommended him as just such a person.

"Mmmhhh," she whimpered again, and brought her lips crashing back down on his. A long moment later, when they both came panting up for air, Draco reluctantly let go her breasts and hooked his thumbs into the waistband of her pants- then yanked. With some willing assistance from Hermione- a wriggle, a shimmy, a kick- the pants ended up halfway across the room. Which was just fine- they had suddenly become far too constraining anyway.

A second later, though, realization crashed in on her of just how exposed she now _was_- more so than she'd ever been with any other man- and she found herself suffering from a sudden and powerful bout of shyness. Flattening herself along Draco's length, she buried her face in his chest as both his hands, unrestricted, petted up and down the length of her body from shoulders to hips and back again. Breathing hard, deep draughts of his scent, she allowed herself to be soothed by these gentle and repetitive motions, until she became aware of two things simultaneously- first, that the attentions of Draco's hands were slowly becoming more localized- confining themselves to the curves of her hips and her bottom, through the white cotton fabric of her panties- and second, that pressed down hard against him as she was, she couldn't help but become aware of what was pressing back _up_ into her; something so amazingly rock-solid and hard that she could barely credit it was part of a human body at all.

She moaned again, into his chest, caught now between nerves and incredible arousal. Without giving any conscious thought to what she was doing- her body was taking over once more- she began to move her hips in slow circles over his; pressing- _grinding_ herself down against him, feeling a sudden warmth she hardly understood, blooming low in her belly.

Draco, for his part, responded to this with an explosive exhalation of breath, arching up toward her and using one hand to grab her hip nearly hard enough to bruise, holding her down against him; his other hand flying up to tangle in her hair and pull her face back to his- her mouth, lips parted in surprise at his sudden, frantic near-violence, granting him immediate access with his tongue, which penetrated her as roughly and completely as- well, as another part of him longed to do.

"Mmmph-!" her tiny sound of surprise traveled directly from her mouth into Draco's- who thought it tasted absolutely exquisite. He held the kiss for a long moment, then released her lips only to drag his tongue over her chin, down her throat and then back up to her ear, planting hot little kisses all the way.

Hermione's entire body was now tight and shivering- hot and cold all at once- a feeling that wasn't helped any by what happened next; Draco shifted abruptly beneath her, a calculated move that caused her to shift as well- and all of a sudden, without any opportunity to prepare for it, she was caught in a wave of sensation more intense than any she'd ever known before… as Draco, still with one hand fisted in her hair, ducked his head and pulled her nearer breast into his mouth, teasing the nipple with his tongue and teeth, while his other hand pushed her panties decisively down, over the swell of her bottom, then darted into the super-heated space between their bodies, and found-

ah… ah… _AHHH_...

Yes, that.

Hermione, who had never been touched there by a man before, tried instinctively to slam her legs shut- but was considerably hampered by the fact that she was still straddling Draco. She dragged in a deep, hitching breath, buried her flushed face in the juncture of Draco's shoulder and neck- and let go of her last inhibitions, relaxing the muscles in her thighs, inasmuch as she was capable of relaxing _any _part of herself at the moment, that is- she still felt rather like a clock wound too tight; trembling from head to foot- and went with what her body was telling her it wanted. And what her body wanted was _more of what Draco was doing._

And more and… _oh God, please_… more.

Her hips began to rock with the motion of Draco's fingers- driving _him_ practically to distraction. Breathing hard through clenched teeth, he ran the hand that had been caught in Hermione's hair down the length of her body, dragging his fingers hard against her skin, and used it to unfasten his own trousers, removing the last barrier between them.

Hermione's eyes, which had fluttered shut as she'd attempted to cope with the multitude of new sensations invading her all at once, now flew open again in surprise as she felt Draco's fingers withdraw- only to be replaced by something a _lot_ more substantial. Her breath now coming in shallow, rapid bursts, she opened her mouth to speak- and then promptly forgot what she'd been going to say as the Polyjuice potion chose that particular instant to wear off and Draco, with a single, great shudder, reverted back to himself right there beneath her.

If anything, the part of him that now lay hot and hard between her thighs, which she'd thought impossibly big mere seconds ago, grew _further_ with the change, causing a shocked little gasp to escape her… but it was his eyes that held her; _mesmerized_ her- his own eyes again, only she'd never seen them like this before- not the color of arctic ice as they usually were, but dark- a deep, smoky gunmetal- dark with lust.

They stared at each other for a long moment, both breathing as if they'd just run a marathon.

Finally- "Draco," Hermione whispered- it was little more than an exhalation, her tongue darting out to moisten bruised lips that felt suddenly parched.

And Draco, his eyes still locked on hers, _heard_ her- something in the transformation back to himself had apparently knocked his hearing back into whack- the volume was turned way down; her voice faint in his ears, but it was _there_- and it seemed the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard. Still, that wasn't where most of his attention was focused at the moment; no, most of his attention was focused… lower. He made a quick, adept adjustment between their bodies that was lost on her- _her_ focus continued to be captured by his eyes alone- then rested his hands lightly on her hips, his thumbs spanning her taut stomach to almost meet in the middle, tracing circles on her skin there, mindlessly, lightly.

"God, Hermione," he said, and his voice was his own again too, and it was hoarse; gritted out between teeth that were clenched with the effort to hold himself in check, belying the gentleness of his hands- "I need you… I need you so damn much it _hurts_-"

And then he took her, driving himself up and in with a single powerful thrust, his hands steadying her hips and pulling her down to meet him. For Draco, it was bliss beyond imagining. For Hermione, it was… something else. Her body reacted as if to a violent shock; back arching, limbs tightening, hands, where they rested on Draco's shoulders, balling convulsively into fists, scratching him in the process.

Incapable at that second even of screaming, so great was her shock as her virginity gave way, the only sound she made was a small, sick little exhalation- the sort of sound one might make when having all the wind unexpectedly knocked out of one, for instance- followed by a little, double-hitching intake of breath.

And Draco, who had maintained eye contact with her through all of this, suddenly registered the dawning pain and shock in her expression, and realized just exactly what it was that he had done. "Oh, shit," he breathed. "Bloody, bloody hell."

Forcing himself to stay very still so as not to cause her further hurt, he let go her hips and brought both of his hands to her face, very gently pulling her down until their noses were nearly bumping. She still had not made a sound, save for those wounded, hitching little breaths. "Hermione," he said, his voice ragged as he continued to fight for self-control against his body, which wanted nothing more than to flip her onto her back and shag her senseless, right into the floor- "Hermione…?"

She let her eyes fall shut and slowly- very slowly- her head dropped until her forehead clunked gently against Draco's shoulder. "Ow," she whispered. "Ow, ow, ow…"

Draco, in response, wrapped his arms around her, hard; one cinching her waist, holding her body as motionless as his- the other across her shoulders, his hand coming to rest against the back of her head, beginning to stroke her hair.

"Shit," he ground out again, "Hermione… why in Merlin's name… didn't you _tell_ me…?"

She managed at last to pull in a reasonably deep, albeit shaky, breath. "I… I showed you," she said, her lips moving against his skin, "Draco, I… showed you… everything."

"No," he replied, in increasing frustration, though his hands remained steady and gentle against her- "no, you did not- bloody well- show me _everything_. You showed me up until the end of school, which I'd like to point out, was _three bloody years ago!_ I just assumed that… between then and now…" he trailed off for a moment, got his own breathing and emotions under control. She was in pain because of him and he _hated_ that; that was the true source of his frustration. He'd been with plenty of virgins; he _knew_ the rules of engagement, as it were, when dealing with them. Hermione, though- she'd fooled him but good; she'd seemed so _confident_, he'd never imagined… and now he'd taken something from her, something precious, something she could never get back, and he done it lightly because he hadn't even known that _that_ was what he was doing, and… shit. Just, shit.

What now?

He was still hilt-deep inside of her, still unbearably aroused, as her body slowly began to relax around him- to accept him. And dear God, he didn't want to stop. But that was her decision. Hers and only hers.

"Hey," he murmured at last, "Hermione. Look at me, all right?"

She raised her head fractionally- their eyes met again. Hers were bright with unshed tears. Draco moved one of his hands to the side of her face, cupping it, his thumb stroking her cheek. "I'm sorry," he said. "If I had known, I would _never_…" he paused. Swallowed. Continued. "I would have done this differently. But from here on out, you're calling the shots. So do you want to keep on… or stop?"

"I… um…" a single tear spilled over; Draco caught it with his thumb, rubbed it away. "I think I… just need a minute… to, um… adjust. This just feels so… strange."

"Strange-bad?" Draco asked, frowning.

"No," she said, surprising him, "just… strange-strange. I mean, it's hard to explain. It… hurts, but I think… I was just caught off-guard, and now it's really almost… almost like…" she paused and swallowed, and if he'd been surprised a second ago, she just about blew him away with what she said next- "like it could be nice… if we take it kinda slow?"

"Wow," Draco breathed reverently, "you're bloody amazing, Granger, did you know?"

She smiled at his reversion to her surname. Then, "I wanted this," she said. "I made a decision… to share this with you. And I'm not going to second-guess it, not now. I started this; I want to finish it."

"That," said Draco emphatically, "makes two of us."

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Heavy-limbed and lethargic with afterglow, they at least had the presence of mind to separate long enough to dress again, Hermione mending their ripped and bloody clothing magically with Draco's wand- it had, after all, been half-a-day since their distress signal had first been sent up- rescuers _must_ be closing in on them, they told themselves optimistically, and they _certainly_ couldn't allow themselves to be discovered in a decadent tangle of sticky, naked limbs. As soon as their clothes were on again, though, they came back together as if magnetized, arms and legs draped over one another, face-to-face so close their noses bumped, and now, for lack of anything else to do, they simply talked.

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"You'll have to do the same for me sometime soon," Hermione said, in a sleep-slurred voice, with a yawn and a smile; "it's only fair, you know."

"Do what?" Draco asked, after a moment- it was taking a moment or two, now, for her words to penetrate his mind, which was swimming with exhaustion. God, how he wanted to sleep- sweet, peaceful sleep with this amazing woman, this woman he'd known for half his life but had only just _discovered_ within the past few hours- wrapped up in his arms- but she still wouldn't let him.

"Draco, are you falling asleep?" she asked, her voice suddenly anxious, raising her head an inch or so from where it had been resting on his shoulder, bringing a hand to his face to push his silver-white hair (his own color again! Thank God!) back out of his eyes- "you can't do that Draco, you have to stay awake- I'm so scared I'll lose you if you don't, and I couldn't bear that, not now and-"

"Ssshhh," he hushed her. "I'm not falling asleep. Do what?"

"Make a pensieve," she murmured, her lips moving against his skin, "show me everything, like I did you… I want to see…" she trailed off, and he realized that she was doing the exact thing she'd forbidden _him_ to do… drifting off to sleep. He smiled drowsily into her hair. The little hypocrite.

"Whatever you want," he said, realizing dimly that he too was beginning to slur his words. "Hermione… I think I love you."

He felt her lips curve up. "Don't fall asleep," she whispered again, as he breathed in her scent and let it begin to carry him away. "Don't you dare, Draco. Don't… fall…"

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They were both asleep, of course, when the rescuers finally arrived. Or at least, they looked asleep, there in each other's arms, Hermione's head resting on Draco shoulder, her dark hair stirring with his every breath, arms and legs entwined in a pose that was (to the complete, open-mouthed shock of Harry, Ron and Snape, who were among the six-person team that burst into the little subterranean chamber, wands at the ready, Snape having cut his own assignment short when word had reached him of a mission having gone disastrously wrong- a distress signal, Draco missing in action-) for all that they were fully dressed again, completely and undeniably intimate.

The reality was, however, that Hermione was closer to unconscious… and Draco was closer to comatose.

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Night. Hermione was sleeping fitfully half-in, half-out of the large, soft armchair that was pulled up to Draco's bed in a small, private room of St. Mungo's hospital. It had been five days since the rescue, and she hadn't left his side once, not once since she'd awakened in Harry's arms, being carried up and up through winding passageways, back toward the surface of the earth. His face wavery, indistinct above her, he'd felt her stir in his arms and had looked down at her, cracking a smile of pure relief. "Thank God," he'd murmured, dropping a brotherly kiss on her forehead. "Merlin, Hermione, you had us going out of our minds!"

Then had come another voice, from just outside her field of vision- "she awake? Harry, is she all right?" and Ron was leaning over her, his familiar, expressive face drawn tight with worry- but collapsing, in the next moment, into puzzled consternation as Hermione, focusing on him, had exclaimed, "Draco!" and then, realizing her slip a second too late, had blushed furiously and buried her face in Harry's shoulder.

The real Draco, it transpired, had been a short distance away, being carried himself, by a murderous-looking Severus Snape. When they'd reached the surface and Harry had put her back on her feet, holding onto her arms for a moment to steady her, she'd glanced frantically around, seen Snape easing Draco to the ground, shouting for a medic in a hoarse, frantic voice that was completely unlike his normal self-possessed drawl, and had half-run, half-stumbled to his side, collapsing to her knees and pulling Draco's head gently into her lap, tears beginning to fall, repeating over and over again, "I told you not to go to sleep, I _told_ you not to go to sleep!"

She hadn't let him out of her sight since, not even as she'd been tended to herself.

During the day people came and went from the room; Dumbledore and Mad-Eye had held her debriefing in here; she'd given them the secret of the code on that first day, and one or the other of them had brought her updates on the Army's progress with it every day since. Harry and Ron came every day as well (though more for her sake than Draco's- puzzled as they were by her abrupt change of heart concerning their childhood nemesis, they would never deny her their friendship or support), as did Snape, who made her tell him over and over again the sequence of events from the moment they'd gotten on the broomstick to the moment they'd fallen off it. Was she _sure_ it had been Bellatrix? Absolutely _sure?_

He was obviously nursing a new, deep, and completely personal vendetta against the dark witch. Hermione heartily approved and wished him all the luck with it. She would have liked to collaborate with him, but had a distinct feeling that whatever Snape was planning, it wouldn't fit very well with the Army's stated policy of using non-violent methods whenever possible- so it was best to let him get on with his vengeance in as quiet and solitary a manner as he liked. That was his nature and what he would prefer in any case, and the fewer Army members knew what he was planning, the better- plausible deniability and all that, you know.

Besides, it was more important to stay with Draco. The healers had stated that he would wake within a week, or, most likely, not at all- and as the second option was entirely unacceptable, Hermione was convinced that his awakening would happen at any time. And she fully intended to be there for it.

So now here she was, wrapped in a broken, violent, dream-riddled sleep- it had been nearly a week since she'd slept any other way than this; in fits and starts, usually for no more than forty minutes at a time without bolting awake, terrified that Draco had slipped away from her while her guard had been down… even though logically she knew there was no way that could happen without setting off all sorts of magical alarms.

Sometimes she'd wake to find Snape, silent and morose, occupying the only other chair in the room; it sat in the corner opposite the bed, under the sole window. He'd sit there, scrunched down, for hours at a time, through the watches of the night, with his arms crossed over his chest and his face sunk in shadow, so that Hermione could never tell whether he was awake or asleep. He reserved speech for the daylight hours- in the dark he simply sat there, silent, ghostly, his fury at Bellatrix almost tangible, radiating out from him in waves.

It seemed the only way he knew to show how much he cared.

00000

This night, however, when Hermione started awake, she was alone in the room, save for Draco. She woke with her heart pounding and the unmistakable sense that something was _happening_… she glanced around the room, but all was quiet and still.

Only then did her gaze settle on Draco, and her heart missed a beat. Because his face was angled toward her, and his eyes, silver in the dim light, were open.

"Hey, Granger," he said hoarsely, and grimaced. Then, "Merlin… head hurts."

"Draco," Hermione breathed, stunned.

"What're you doing here?" he asked.

Hermione felt as though she'd just been doused in ice water. "What do you mean?" she asked through lips that were suddenly numb, that hardly wanted to obey her. Her mind was screaming, _screaming_ at her about concussions leading to memory loss, sometimes permanent. "How can you say that after everything that happened?"

"What are you talking about? What happened?"

And now tears were springing to her eyes and she was blinking them back hard, and her throat was closing up so she could barely choke out, "_We_ did, Draco. _We_ happened! In that little room! All those hours. And the pensieve. And I gave… I gave you…" she dropped her head in her hands, battling with the sobs that wanted to come, before she had a chance to see the dawning recognition in his eyes.

"Hey, wait a minute," he said, trying to struggle up onto his elbows- failing- "you had that dream too?"

Hermione took a hitching breath and looked up, hope rekindled in her eyes.

"Did you-" she hesitated, swallowed. "Did you like that dream, Draco?"

His eyes searched hers, narrowed- then, abruptly, he looked away. "Best bloody dream I've ever had," he said quietly, looking past her, avoiding her eyes. "But not real." And here his voice turned bitter. "Nothing that good can be real. I was hurt. It was a fever dream. It was delirium. That's all."

"Draco."

When he made no response, she slipped out of her chair and into the bed, easing herself down full-length beside him, cupping his face in her palm and turning it back toward her, forcing him to look. "It was real," she whispered, "and I for one don't want it to end. You owe me, remember? You owe me a pensieve."

"Holy shit," he breathed, and she could almost taste his words, their faces were so close, "no kidding? It's true?"

Hermione managed a shaky grin, even as the tears began to overflow her eyes. "I can prove it's true," she whispered, "if you can manage to stay awake this time," and in a single, fluid movement she was straddling him, right there in the hospital bed, with her wand, _accio'd_ from the nightstand, in her hand. Beneath her Draco stretched, gave an exaggerated yawn. "I don't know, Granger," he drawled teasingly, his mercurial eyes heavy-lidded, but simmering, suddenly, with desire. "It's the middle of the night. You'd better have something memorable planned if you want to keep me awake."

Hermione wasn't worried. His words were belied by his eyes, and by that other part of him, which she could feel, unmistakably, stiffening between her thighs. She flicked her wand toward the door; it locked. And then, never breaking eye-contact with him, she promptly spelled a familiar message in flaming letters in the air;

_I know who you are, Draco Malfoy. And one way or another, I am GOING to keep you awake._

And her wand clattered, forgotten, to the floor as he reached up both-handed and pulled her down into an earth-shattering kiss.

000oo The End oo000

00000

(A/N: Thanks to everyone who's read and reviewed this fic! Gosh, I love feedback, even concrit! To those who have felt the romance proceeded too quickly to be entirely realistic, I can only offer my usual excuse when writing an exchange fic; these fic exchanges have time limits, usually between three and six weeks, so when working under a considerable time restraint I have to move things along more quickly than I do in my longer fics. It's certainly not the most canon-centric fic I've written, but I hope you've found it a fun read- I had a lot of fun writing it! Oh, and this story won second place in the Best Overall Fic Award over at the exchange site! Woohoo! If anyone reading this voted for me over there, _thank you sooo much!_

Now, a word about the next project I'm going to be working on; many of you know of Alex25, she's a terrific D/Hr writer on this site, and I know we have many readers/reviewers in common (if you haven't read her work yet, DO!) Well- she and I have started a new pen-name, "Kyra and Alex" (yes, we're wildly creative) and we're going to be co-authoring a story under the new name. I don't know exactly when the first chapter will be up, but it'll be within a few weeks, I think. She's taking the first chapter, I'm taking the second, she's taking the third, and so on. The thing that will make it fun an unusual for both us and the readers is that neither of us know what the other will write until it's done and published on the site. Once I read her first chapter, I'm going to have to pick up the ball and run with it, and wherever I leave the second one, she'll have to do the same... like a game. We're hoping this will keep things interesting for us _and _the readers. The only thing we've decided on definitely is the pairing (and I suppose in the interest of being fair to you all, I should disclaim that it is _not_ a D/Hr fic; I repeat, NOT a D/Hr fic. It _is_ a het pairing, though; not slash. And it is, of course, a Harry Potter fic.) I really hope, though, that some of you might give it a whirl anyway! So keep an eye out, okay?)


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